Rethinking D&T: Practical Strategies for Fostering Ethical and Sustainable Design

Subscriber-only episode

In this episode of Talking D&T, I reflect on my thought-provoking conversation with David Spendlove from Tuesday's episode. David's radical ideas about design and technology education, particularly his challenge to move away from unsustainable consumerism and embed critical thinking about values and politics, got me thinking about what this might look like in practice for D&T teachers.

I explore how we can reimagine D&T lessons to put values and sustainability at the heart, moving away from designing and making products that may end up in the bin. I suggest reframing design projects to focus on systemic solutions, emphasizing design for longevity, repair, and reuse, and encouraging critical discussions about the ethics of design.

For younger children, I propose using storytelling, imaginative play, and hands-on material collections to explore sustainability and empathy. I also highlight the importance of setting design challenges within children's own experiences and concerns while pushing them to understand others' perspectives.

Throughout the episode, I offer practical strategies and ideas for teachers to incorporate these principles into their classrooms. I conclude by inviting listeners to consider whether we need a radical rethink of D&T education or if opportunities for change already exist within the current curriculum framework.


(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)

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Chapters

• 0:54 Rethinking Design and Technology Education
• 7:48 Reimagining Design and Technology Education

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:55

in Tuesday's episode, david Spendlove and I had a. Well, I thought it was a great conversation. I love talking to David. He blows my head off um, but always really comes to the table with some radical thoughts about design and technology which some people might find quite uncomfortable. But he always challenges me and I hope he he did the same for you as well, and we need people like that in the design and technology community. So I wanted to pick up on some of the things that he talked about in that episode that I kind of got me thinking is thinking about.

Alison Hardy: 1:28

The people who tend to listen to my podcast are design and technology teachers who are. You know, you've got to start thinking about what does this look like in practice, um, how would moving away from this unsustainable consumerism, as David talks about, um, and embed critical thinking about values and politics and design and technology? What would that, what would that look like in in lessons? So if we, if we think about that I mean this is something you know sustainability has been there within design and technology um, since time immemorial, let's use that language but particularly, you know, since the first iteration of the national curriculum in 1990. It's been there. It was taken out in the current version in 2013 for political reasons, which I'm not going to go into, because I hear I want to talk about some of the some of the practical ways we can think about this, because I think all everybody involved in design and technology would be thinking and questioning. You know why? How? How can we do this? I mean, we used to use the six R's very much, but let's start thinking sort of beyond that in our lessons. I think some of these things, some of these ideas, are already there. Many teachers will be already using them, and I think some of these happen internationally as well, and I've talked to colleagues, particularly in Sweden, about what design and technology education looks like there.

Alison Hardy: 2:50

So this is trying to sort of move away from this default position of designing and making products. It's particularly around the making that may be something that nobody really needs. Okay, let's be, let's be rapid, let's let's say it out loud the art, the art deco clock right, who needs that? The mobile phone holder, who needs that? Because actually, on the one hand, we're saying to children you know, let's think about the ethics, the sustainability, the environment, and that's, on the other hand, let's make this knick-knack. I'm not going to finish off the sentence. We all know what it is. Let's make this knick-knack that it's going to end up in the bin because nobody actually needs it. So let's, let's try and step back, as, as people in design technology education, think about that.

Alison Hardy: 3:30

So how would we move away from this designing and making products that no one really needs, using materials and processes that harm the environment? What would a reimagined dnt look like? Well, it'll put values and sustainability at the heart, which I know has been the call around pearson's, but I, you know, I've spoken elsewhere about issues around the, the pearson's proposal, which I'm not going to go into here because that's not what this is about this week. So what could we do? We could reframe design projects that focus on systematic solutions, system solutions rather than individual products, and I know this happens in other parts of the world. In design education, students could explore issues like waste reduction, community resilience, inclusive design and actually one of the most downloaded episodes in the whole of my podcast is the one um with james bleach and I've forgotten who else I interviewed, sorry um about inclusive and empathetic design. So that's obviously speaking to the heart of what many teachers are trying to do. I think that's really important.

Alison Hardy: 4:31

We could think about emphasizing design for longevity, repair and reuse rather than planned obsolescence and disposability. So that could be getting children think about when they're designing something how, what's it, what's its end of life, what's its life cycle? Where does it go? How can it be repaired? Can it be repaired? You wouldn't necessarily do this in every design and make activity, but you could do it in many of them. You wouldn't do every single aspect, but you know asking the question right at the start all right, we're going to design this for longevity. What do we need to think about? What do we think about in terms of durability, sourcing of material? How can we repair this? How can we reuse this, repurpose it as it's time, as it? Lifetimes go on, so it's not a single use or a short term use. We could foreground critical discussions about the ethics of design.

Alison Hardy: 5:18

So, thinking back to last week's subscription episode when I talked about, my mind has just gone blank when I talked about critique, there we go Of products, you know, encouraging students to question who benefits, who is harmed, what values are embedded in the things that we create and I talk about David Layton's values. Taxonomy, I think, is the way to do that. But you know who does benefit, who is harmed. And there's a really nice and losers um activity that can be used. That comes from the luffield foundation. You can find it on dnt for dnt um website. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. But I think can be used in lessons.

Alison Hardy: 5:59

Um, thinking about material choices and that's as a teacher, where you, where you buy your materials from. And then thinking about end of life considerations, sort of thinking about earth-centered design parameters. So those are some things to think about, but I think um then thinking around, what does that look like? Particularly for younger children, it's going to be quite difficult. Thinking about primary age children, what could we think about? We could think about storytelling and imaginative play. Um Teachers could use narratives to role play scenarios about sustainability and empathy, you know. Thinking about that waste reduction a class could read a story about a town facing a waste crisis and then act out different characters trying to find solutions. So that becomes a mainly designing activity rather than a full design and make.

Alison Hardy: 6:50

Thinking about having a hands-on collection. I've designed a design technology studio with Matt McLean. Once we talked about handling collections. Very much a goldsmith's ideology around handling collections, but having a handling collection of different materials, of natural, recycled, repurposed materials for children to explore and manipulate, to think about where materials come from, how they can be used creatively and what happens to when they're done. There's things about setting them in their own experiences and concerns. They have that empathy and then pushing pushing them out from that to gain an understanding by other people. And then thinking about age appropriate discussions of values and impact, asking questions about how would you feel if someone made this for you or what could you do this when we no longer needed it. So designing as a teacher, those questions to ask, thinking about your pedagogical approach to tease those answers out of children, and thinking about it kind of.

Alison Hardy: 7:49

I had one idea around thinking about nature and it took me back to sue taplin's episode um, where she talks about, you know, designing in nature. You know again, thinking about taking children out to regularly observe, appreciate and learn from the natural world, to think about ideas that work with nature rather than against it, and I think sue's work is really interesting in this point. So there's kind of lots of ways we can think about re-imagining design and technology 2.0, as David talks it, that moves us away from consumerism, which is unsustainable, and encouraging critical thinking about design and values and politics, and politics in a small P, not a big P, but thinking about what that might look like practically in a classroom. So I hope I've given you some ideas there to think about that maybe you could take forward in whichever place you work to think about. You know, what could this look like in practice? It's beyond the six R's and that's not to dismiss the six R's, but to kind of say what can we do in every lesson or in every unit of work that is thinking about this?

Alison Hardy: 8:57

So do we actually need, as David suggests, a radical rethink of design and technology 2.0? Or are the opportunities for this already there within the national curriculum? How would you shape it? What would it look like in terms of thinking about a curriculum for design and technology in your classrooms, in your practice, in your organisations? Or thinking about reshaping the curriculum, that is, thinking about moving away from this idea of unsustainable consumerism and thinking about critical thinking about values and ethics and sustainability within the curriculum. Anyway, hopefully there's plenty of there to think about. It's got my mind spinning just talking about it. As ever, come back to me if you've got any ideas, thoughts or questions. I'd be really fascinated to hear how you might take some of these ideas forward. Or do you actually think that we need a brand new curriculum in England for design and technology?