Making Sense of the Design & Technology Curriculum Aims

Subscriber-only episode

In this episode of Talking D&T, I dive into the aims of the Design and Technology National Curriculum in England. I discuss the four main aims as they are currently written, analyzing what each one entails and how they contribute to the overall purpose of the subject. 

I explore the first aim, which focuses on developing creative, technical, and practical expertise to participate in a technological world. The second aim is about building a repertoire of knowledge, understanding, and skills to design and make high-quality prototypes and products. I question the wording and phrasing of this aim, pondering if it could be streamlined for clarity. 

The third aim revolves around critiquing, evaluating, and testing ideas, products, and the work of others. I highlight the importance of distinguishing between critiquing one's own work versus the work of peers or professionals. Lastly, I touch on the fourth aim concerning nutrition and cooking.

Throughout the episode, I emphasize the significance of having clear aims to guide lesson planning and measure the success of the subject. I argue that well-defined aims provide a cohesive big picture and prevent the subject content from feeling disjointed.

While I generally agree with the aims, I point out some issues with their phrasing and offer insights on how teachers and curriculum planners can interpret and apply them effectively in the classroom. I hope this episode helps listeners better understand the intentions behind the Design and Technology curriculum.


(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)

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Chapters

• 0:54 Decoding Design and Technology Curriculum
• 12:29 The Importance of Setting Aims

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:55

so hopefully you've listened to the tuesday episode um on decoding the national curriculum for design and technology and I wanted to unpick a little bit of some of the things that I talked about in that episode around what the purpose and the aims of the subject are as they are currently written in the national curriculum.

Alison Hardy: 1:16

So you know, on the national curriculum in England it has the purpose of study and the aims and, as I talked about on the episode, the GCSEs, that's the qualifications. They don't have any aims any longer and there has been debate about whether there should be aims for a school subject or a national curriculum and, as I talked about, professor Michael Young says there shouldn't and Professors John White and Michael Rice say there should and I sit in that camp of that there should be. So I thought what I'd do today is I'd talk through a little bit about the aims of the national curriculum in England as they are written at the moment what's there, what's not there, what's missing and how if you're a teacher in listening or a curriculum planner in listening how and why you could use them in thinking about what's actually happening day to day in lessons. So let's take a look at what those aims are. So there's four listed in the national curriculum. The first is to develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Now, let's first of all say that really there's two in there, but what the essence is of them is around taking part in this technological world, and it's not so much in terms of being able to stand back and critique the technological world, but it has actually been able to interact with, develop and use the technology. That it seems to be inferring in that first aim. So the creative, technical and practical expertise and that hints there at process knowledge in terms of understanding children, understanding and learning processes, so creative processes, technical processes, practical processes, to be able to perform, and again, performance is around process and activity and skills to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world, in an increasingly technological world. So that first one is very much about the knowledge. To me it is anyway the knowledge that is around process, the procedural knowledge, and some of that might be design knowledge and some of that might be technology knowledge, but it's the activity. And so this is about the individual, the child, having those skills to take part in the world around technology and technological developments. So I don't think anybody can really dispute with that. But hopefully they are starting to give some hints about what that might look like in a classroom. Because if we say that design and technology is about developing pupils' ability to interact with and influence the made world, that's a more higher level possible aim that we've talked about in design and technology historically in the subject, then these skills are around children been able to do that for themselves.

Alison Hardy: 4:33

Ok then the second one build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users. And if you're listening and you've been involved in design and technology and you're a teacher, then you will recognise that some of the day to day activity that happens in lessons you will recognise that at some of the day-to-day activity that happens in lessons. And I think it's really interesting here that there's this separation of knowledge, understanding and skills. So knowledge I think we've always had a tension in the subject around what we mean by knowledge. Is it factual knowledge? Is it declarative knowledge? There's been some debate about whether we fit in the organisation of knowledge, about substantive and disciplinary. I've got reservations about that. I've talked about that in other podcasts.

Alison Hardy: 5:18

I'm not going to go off on that one, but basically this is about children building their toolbox for want of a better word, maybe of knowledge and skills and understanding around design and technology. That means that when they're faced with a design context, a design brief, a need that they can respond to it and develop and design and make some high quality prototypes and products. So I think that's kind of many of us will see that sitting as the essence of the subject in terms of what we're doing today on a day-to-day basis with children. That first one, though, about developing the creative technical expertise perform every day tasks, is about the ongoing, almost more beyond school. This second one is more about sort of within school, and some people might say that this is starting to hint at the vocational aspect of the subject, because if you move into the world of design and technology beyond school, then children might be involved as to be crucial in their careers beyond as well as what they're doing in the classroom. But I just want to pick that aim a little bit further Build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to skills, in order to Okay. Now, first of all, I wonder if we even need the word apply in the first section Build a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make. The essence of apply is actually inferred in that second part in order to because they have to be able to apply it when they are designing and making. Now there's also people might misread this and think well, therefore, they have to have that full repertoire before they can design and make. And I don't think that's what's here at all.

Alison Hardy: 7:28

There's different times when we need to teach children things. Sometimes we teach them it just in time, so just as they're about to use it. Or sometimes we're them it just in time, so just as they're about to use it. Or sometimes we're building it up over time. So, for example, we might decide to teach pupils in year one about something being strong, but then, when they get into year three or year four, we might talk about strong in a slightly different way. It's's strong when it's been squashed or compressed, or it's strong when it's been pulled. So we're increasing their repertoire of knowledge about materials as they go through school. But this is all in order to design and make high quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users. That's why we teach children knowledge, understanding and skills. Ok, and that understanding, again I wonder if that's a hangover, I think, from the early days of the national curriculum. But whether we can actually explain what we mean by understanding, is that a link between knowledge and application might well be. And what do we mean by skills? Are we saying the skills, therefore, aren't knowledge? I think they are knowledge. They're just a procedural type of knowledge rather than a conceptual or a decorative type of knowledge.

Alison Hardy: 8:51

And then the third one create, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others. Again, there's like so much in this one line Okay, critique, evaluate and test. Now, there's an implication there that there's a difference between critique, evaluate and test. Could we have just used the word critique? Would that been understand? Understood? Um, if we took away evaluating tests, that we mean actually to evaluate and test, is that why they're there? I don't know. I mean, I was part of writing these aims, but you know we were doing this under a high degree of pressure. So you start to wonder. You know what's what's this about? So there's two things anyway. So, rather than going off on that tangent, there's's two things here. Excuse me, it's about critiquing their own ideas and products. Interestingly, ideas and products as if they are two distinct things. Interesting that it's the word products, when in the previous line it's prototypes and products and the work of others. So, and how we would teach children to critique their own work and critique the work of others. They're two different processes. Possibly there'll be some crossover.

Alison Hardy: 10:06

Some strategies that children will use to critique and test their own ideas and products will be different than how they critique and test the work of others. And also, as a teacher, it's needing to be able to make those distinctions about the work of others. Is that peers in the group? Is that peers in the group? Is that peers within the school or is that professionals? And why are we critiquing it? And it's, as a teacher, being able to make those judgments about why we are putting that in a lesson that children critique the work of others. You know I'm sat here at my desk and I've got an e-coffee cup and I could have done a lesson where I've asked children critique, critique it. Now why would I want them to be doing that? I might be asking them to do that because I'm wanting them to gain an understanding of the material properties that are used to develop their literacy, their language in able to describe products. I want to teach them some technical language through evaluation, or it might be that I'm wanting them to think about the value around sustainability, and so we're using a product that's got sustainable elements to it and we might want to be then introducing different concepts about sustainability, about its reusability, its length of purpose and how it's responding to some wider issues in society. So there's lots of different ways and reasons why we ask children to critique the work of others in terms of a professional context and, again, a teacher needs to use their professional judgment to be able to do that.

Alison Hardy: 11:38

So that's the third aim in the national curriculum. And then this fourth one understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook. Now, I'm not going to go into the whys and wherefores of whether this should be within the design and technology national curriculum. It is there. It is a clear aim for the knowledge that's around cooking and nutrition, food and cooking okay. So we need to think about again understand. There's no here, interestingly, about building that, that sort of database, that tool bank of of knowledge, that toolbox of knowledge around cooking and nutrition. Um, and again it's. It's got several layers in here. It's understanding, applying and learn how to cook. It's almost got two, if not three aims within that.

Alison Hardy: 12:29

Now why do I think aims are important? Okay, so I've unpicked those aims a little bit. Why do I think they're important? Because I think when we are designing something, designing a lesson, designing a unit of work, designing a product which you could say a unit of work is, we need to know what it's for, where it's going, how we're going to measure its success. And those aims are the way of measuring its success. But also they're used at the start to kind of capture the very essence of the uniqueness of this product, you know, and in our case, the subject. So I think having those knowing why we're here, knowing why we're doing this subject, is really important. Otherwise, the list of subject content afterwards can be seen as disjointed, and I think that's where the GCSE, or one of the reasons what the GCSE suffers from, is it's disjointed. All the knowledge that's there, how does it all link together? What's the point of it? Why are we doing it? What's the? What's the big picture? And these aims give that big picture.

Alison Hardy: 13:31

I'd be interested to see whether you agree or disagree with the aims that are here. I've started to hint that I'm in general agreement with them, but I have some issues around the way they've been written that they're actually potentially quite confusing. But I think if we unpick them and hopefully what you've listened to me talking about has helped unpick them a little bit more if we unpick them it helps with planning and, as usual, kip has decided he wants to feature in this episode of the podcast just as I'm coming to an end. But anyway, hopefully you found that helpful and interesting. I've enjoyed talking through some of those aims. I'm sure I'll come back to them at a later date and, as ever, do get back to me if you've got any points of interest or things that you want to discuss further.