Effective technology and design teaching: getting it right in the classroom

Technology and design was added to the Northern Ireland curriculum in September 1992 and through it, teachers seek to address the need for pupils to understand the ever-changing man-made world by developing skills and understanding in its four elements of designing, communicating, manufacturing and the use of energy and control. To be effective in attaining these goals, it is important that teachers allow pupils to have a voice in their learning. They should do this by taking account of pupil responses to the tasks they issue and using those responses as a basis for making choices about instruction and support strategies. This is particularly important in technology and design as pupils need to interpret instructions in light of their design ideas. This paper outlines how three case studies of technology and design teaching were used to identify a range of teaching and learning strategies and evaluate them for their potential to create a learning dialogue with pupils. Drawing on aspects of the effective teaching debate, this learning dialogue was then applied to how teachers exploited pupil histories, managed a range of collaboration strategies and provided effective task orientation. The case studies were based on observations, interviews and content analysis of work over a complete design-and-make project in each school. The paper outlines three continua for effectiveness in each of the three areas observed. The first continuum shows that teachers need a more individualised view of building on pupil histories, the second outlines a range of strategies for the management of pupil collaboration in learning and the third suggests that pupils need to be orientated into complex tasks in ways that support a progressively increasing level of independence in their thinking.