Talking D&T
Talking D&T is a podcast about design and technology education. Join me, Dr Alison Hardy, as I share news, views, ideas and opinions about D&T. I also talk about D&T with teachers, researchers and academics from the D&T community.
The views on this podcast are my own and of those I am interviewing and are not connected to my institution. Much of the content is work in progress. As well as talking about D&T, I use it to explore new ideas and thoughts related to D&T education and my research, which are still embryonic and may change. Consult my publications for a reliable record of my considered thoughts on the topic featured in this podcast.
Podcast music composed by Chris Corcoran (http://www.svengali.org.uk)
Talking D&T
Talking Design Studio Pedagogy with Alice Hellard and Derek Jones
In this episode of Talking D&T, I chat with Alice Hellard, Programme Lead for Design and Technology PGCE at Goldsmiths University, and Derek Jones, senior lecturer in sustainable design at the Open University. We talk about design studios and their potential impact on D&T education.
Our conversation explores how studio practices can shape learning experiences, from primary classrooms to higher education. Alice shares insights from her teaching background, while Derek offers a unique perspective on virtual studios and they both discuss extended cognition in design.
We tackle some a range of topics, including the challenges of assessment in D&T, the importance of dialogue in the design process, and how to foster a studio mindset in secondary schools. One key takeaway is the value of creating spaces where students can experiment without predetermined outcomes – a concept that might seem daunting but could revolutionise some teachers' approach to D&T education.
As we discuss the various types of knowledge in design, from explicit facts to tacit understanding, I reflect of the complexity of our subject. This episode will challenge you to reflect on your own teaching practices and consider how elements of design studio pedagogy might enhance your students' learning experiences.
Details about Alice and Derek
Alice on Linkedin
Goldsmiths
Email: derek.jones@open.ac.uk
Derek on LinkedIn
Distance Design Education website
Design Research Society Pedagogy SIG
Radzikowska, M., Ruecker, S., & Roberst-Smith, J. (2019). Forget to Clean-Up When You’re Done. Proceedings of DRS Learn X Design 2019, 361–374.
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you're listening to the talking dt podcast. I'm dr allison hardy, a writer, researcher and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode I share views, news and opinions about dnt. Today it's another episode in the shaping dnt series and a bit like some of the ones I've done more recently, uh. So it's taken a slightly different angle on this one because I think there's something that's really significant about pedagogy and space and our approaches that we take within the subject that can influence and shape what happens in the classroom and then possibly what might influence beyond the classroom for design and technology. So I've got two people who are interested in this particular aspect. We're going to talk about design studio this morning.
Alison Hardy:This is a podcast episode that I've been trying to get set up, I think, probably for a good year, and we finally managed it this morning. Um, I've got two people here who are really just got a wonderful different way of thinking, so I'm expecting that I'm going to have my head blown off this morning. Um, keeping up with their conversation. They're both pulling faces um to kind of put themselves sort of in the shade, but actually they're real two giants in the way they think about design and design and technology. Um and the way they challenge what we're doing in the subject, but also um one person's coming from a different perspective in terms of thinking about in higher education and design practice in its wider sense. So, given all that build up, don't disappoint you. Two. No, you won't. You won't. Uh, you've not done before. They're both on the podcast. I'm going to start first of all with you, alice. Would you like to give a quick overview about who you are, where you are and what you do?
Alice Hellard:Hi, yes, I'm Alice Hellard. I am the Programme Lead for Design and Technology, pgce at Goldsmiths University of London, but formerly was a Design and technology teacher and I worked in a couple of London secondary schools, and the second one I was the head of department. And so my interest in this conversation about the design studio is actually not I'm not coming from it from the position of knowing a lot about the sort of the theory behind design studios. I'm really coming at this conversation, um, from my positioning as a teacher and, you know, thinking about kind of um, yeah, really concretely, what that might look like, can look like, could look like in school great.
Alison Hardy:Thank you very much, leah, and that's great to have your perspective on that. And then derek would like to say give a little bit of overview about who you are and what you are and what you do.
Derek Jones :I'll try to do that and not let you down, obviously as well.
Alice Hellard:No pressure, very important.
Derek Jones :No pressure, absolutely. Yeah. So my name is Derek Jones and I'm a senior lecturer in sustainable design at the Open University. At the Open University, we teach design at a distance, so you know we teach adults in online settings. We're not present, we don't have physical studios, if you like, and so we teach it in a very, very different way, and that means you have to approach it differently. My background is also as a practitioner. I'm actually an architect. I've had 10, maybe 15 years of practice experience as well, so I guess I come to this as a practitioner first and then a kind of academic second, although I really strongly believe that the two could go together a lot better and a lot healthier. So, yeah, I'm particularly interested in studio and how studio works and why. So yeah, that's where I'm coming from.
Alison Hardy:Thank you very much. Well, you haven't disappointed eyes with you so far, but we're only about three minutes in, so no, no just building you up. So, yes, this, this conversation around design studio, so it's been hinted out there. So, derek's, I'm going to come back to you. Can you give us a bit of an overview about what, what it means?
Derek Jones :That's a good question and I guess that's the question I started with. As I said, I'd moved from practice into academia and at one point you know the conversation about do you fancy doing a PhD? Comes up. You know, do you formalize this knowledge in some kind of way? Now you've got a different pressure on you. I guess, as a practitioner, you know you don't have to do it necessarily for academic reasons or for, you know, promotion reasons, because you've already got a bit of a career behind you.
Derek Jones :So I was fortunate enough that I was able to approach it, I guess, as a something I could kind of find that I wanted to do. So I decided to do something on studio. We, as I say, we teach design at a distance at the Open University and I really wanted to know how does this work? Is it a studio? Are there differences, similarities, is there something we could say about online that might be referred to in proximate space or physical studios and vice versa, because I was also very interested in physical architecture and virtual architecture at the time, believe it or not, and the two things actually are related in a kind of weird and interesting way. Anyway, bottom line is decided to do the PhD on it, went to the library expecting to find the book on studio so I could do the comparison and there wasn't one. There was a whole bunch of stuff, there was a whole bunch of information, but nobody had kind of brought it together. And then you realise there's a good reason for that. You know, studio is a big thing. It's not necessarily a singular practice. It's certainly not a, you know, an easy thing, if you like, or a simple thing to communicate. But yeah, that paid to the PhD being a simple comparison thing. So instead, what I decided to do was try to make sense of it from the perspective of being in a distance studio. So it's almost kind of perverse in a way.
Derek Jones :I've learned about design by teaching design at a distance, because you kind of have to make it visible, you have to do certain things that stop you waffling about it, and I'm very conscious of the fact. I need to stop waffling very soon. But you have to be very clear about what it is that you're doing. So you can can't just say, well, I just dot, dot, dot, or you just sit there until an idea comes. You have to give direction, you have to be quite explicit about things but still retain that kind of uncertainty and that implicitness. At the same time, it's quite an interesting challenge. So that's what allowed me to look at studio, I guess, in a different way, and so we've started this new studio properties project with a view to bringing together some of these kind of like ideas and findings. Maybe talk a bit about that a bit later, but yeah, that's a kind of quick potted history, I guess, of where I come from with studio. Is that?
Alison Hardy:enough. Yeah well, I'm going to ask you a little bit more on Alice. Feel free to chip in. So when you say studio, so somebody like me might think of a physical space, Is it?
Derek Jones :a space or is it a way of thinking and doing design? So yes, originally I started thinking the obvious thing, which is that it is a physical space. It might have non-physical components to it. You know the social structures, the cultural structures, all of the other stuff that goes around it. Incredibly important, but maybe the physical thing was the catalyst. And even in an online space, when we saw online behaviours that were similar but not quite the same as physical spaces, that was an indicator that things might not be as straightforward as it's just the physical space. But these other things that happen in the physical space are actually as important, if not more important.
Derek Jones :So I guess the longer I've been involved in this and the more we've discovered different properties of studio, the more I would say it moves away from that traditional view of it just being a room and there's lots of other stuff that it could be, and I think those would be the interesting things to explore in terms of well, where might else those propagate? Where else might they be? So, for example, peter Lloyd did an interesting podcast last week talking about social constructivist design education. So that's design education where it really depends on the people that you're working with to construct what it is that you believe design is. And for him he would describe parliament as being a studio god help us all um, where we agree to do certain things. He would describe those as studios simply because that social component, that space where people try to come together to respond to a problem, to do something, that sharing, I think, is actually quite an important bit when we talk about proximity and that later on.
Alice Hellard:So so would you sort of, is it right to sort of summarize studio practice as a sort of as a, as a sort of collective practice of thinking, doing kind of emerging ideas, that kind of thing? And so it's not just the physical space but it's the set of practices that can take place within that social kind of setting, as it were. And the social is quite crucial to the notion of studio personally speaking, alice, yeah, I would say so personally.
Derek Jones :um, I don't have any evidence for that as yet, and we do need to be careful that we don't then say, therefore, studio is everything you know, because then you do that common thing where, yeah, it's everything, but then that means it's nothing you know, there's nothing to say. I still do think there is something special about studio inverted commas as a concept and there's a very few theorists who do actually understand it as a concept and it might be worth picking up some of those kind of like signature things, because I think they're the interesting things that might be translated across studio. I do think it is slightly different. I do think it does bear attention because it is different.
Alice Hellard:And just following up on that, because that was kind of my next question actually do you think is it signature for design? Is it like a signature approach for design specifically, Good question, shulman.
Derek Jones :In that famous paper it's cited by thousands and thousands of people. That's not even a paper. It doesn't even have evidence. It was just a kind of idea he came up with and he called it the signature pedagogy. In design, the studio was one of the key signature pedagogies. I guess from one point of view, if you're looking at it, say, from a kind of like habitus point of view, it's something that's sticky, it's something that keeps appearing time and time and time again all throughout lots of different design disciplines, and that stickiness bears attention. You know, it's worth paying attention to that. How it becomes sticky, how it is maintained, is quite interesting. So yeah, I possibly I don't know. I'm going to sit on the fence on whether or not it's a pure signature. I suspect so. I suspect so.
Alice Hellard:Yeah. So it's interesting because one of the reasons that I'm really interested in this conversation is because when I was a teacher and a new teacher actually it really sort of bothered me how, and really got under my skin how the stuff I was teaching in school was really quite different to how I'd learned about design in university and in my professional life, and we had these kind of, you know, very predetermined sort of outcome focused projects where everybody was kind of making the same thing over a period of time. We all know that kind of design and make assignment model, um. And so I did some reading around this and I and I and I was really struck at the time by this word enculturation and in order to learn the domain of something and the domain of a kind of you know, uh well, the domain of design, my students as, according to to what I've been reading, I felt they needed to be enculturated into the practices of design.
Alice Hellard:My students as, according to to what I've been reading, I felt they needed to be enculturated into the practices of design, which means that they needed to have experiences and the sort of the language of design and, um, sort of be able to observe, and also that they needed instruction, teaching in design, um, but all of that as a kind of, as a set of kind of things that came together so.
Alice Hellard:So that's what ended up sort of driving my approach to my sort of classroom, if you like. Now I'm not suggesting for a minute that me as a kind of fairly new teacher with my developed, continually trying to develop my practice, I wasn't consciously setting up a sort of studio approach, but. But but I think I relate a lot of what you're saying now to that kind of thinking that I had as a teacher. I really wanted to to introduce my students and to get them, to encourage them to be confident in the domain of design by giving them those kind of, to encourage them to be confident in the domain of design by giving them those kind of designerly experiences.
Derek Jones :Completely and utterly agree. There's two properties from the new book that spring to mind. One is actually it uses the word enculturation. It's actually called eculturation, enculturation and indoctrination.
Derek Jones :And believe it or not, that's actually a spectrum. So at the extreme end you have absolute beasting studios. I was brought up in a beasting studio. Well, I started off in a beasting studio and then it moved. Um, there was a big shift at the time, um, and there's a whole bunch of new educators that came in and that basically means that you stand in front of your drawings, you get shouted at and told that's not what to do and you repeat, and repeat, and repeat is that like when the when the teacher draws on the drawing?
Alice Hellard:you know that kind of thing yeah, exactly, right, absolutely, basically I just chip in what was that word?
Alison Hardy:beating or beating? I?
Derek Jones :was quite a bit.
Alison Hardy:I was like maybe that's a scottish pedagogical term, I don't know I'm just thinking about this going through transcription and I'm thinking this is going to be interesting anyway, sorry, okay.
Derek Jones :Oh brilliant. At the other end of it you have acculturation, which is where you're trying to bring the student's culture into the studio so it can inform the studio itself. But in the middle you have that lovely sweet spot, which is where you're trying to actually as you quite rightly say, alice you're trying to give students the language, the confidence. I remember the first time I was taught to fold a drawing as an architect. I know it sounds really stupid and really simple, but in folding that drawing I, for a second, I felt like an architect, I felt like a professional. It's just a little symbol, it's a little trapping of what professionals do.
Derek Jones :Studio is a really important simulation. It's a space where you can try out things. More importantly, you can try them out if the right sort of atmosphere is encouraged. You can try them out without fear of reprisal. You can try out these different words, these different ways of doing things. That is also incredibly important. That takes us to some of the more advanced studios where you would hope that by the time you get that level of confidence and you do see this in some secondary schools.
Derek Jones :I remember studying six year English and the shift there was when you were suddenly allowed to have an opinion. You were allowed to almost give back, if you like, to the class what it was that you were creating about this piece of literature or this piece of thing, and that's where studios then move into that acculturation. It's almost kind of like a spectrum and what I would really stress is really difficult to avoid sometimes, because you're in that mode of we need to produce X, y, z where you dismiss a student's culture and you say that culture is invalid. For example, these drawings look ugly. I hate that music. I don't like this, whatever it is. I do not value your culture. You need to replace it with this culture. We've had that for far too long, I think, in design, education, the global northern tradition Excuse me, the global tradition and it still infects us and I'd love to see that challenged.
Derek Jones :I couldn't agree more.
Alice Hellard:And a part of that is our sort of within sort of secondary education. It's changing a bit now but this dependence we've had on design history and this sort of the canon of design history being quite, you know, through these quite rigidly taught design movements and that kind of thing, and actually that sort of sets out design as as only really having existed post the industrial revolution and and all of that kind of stuff and everything that emerged around mass production really at that point, um, and globalization, all those kinds of things, and obviously design has a has a much longer history than that. But when our approach is to kind of yeah to all of those things are shaped by quite a narrow kind of understanding of what's right and what wrong, and you know, dita rams principles of of good design and all those kinds of stuff which which I definitely bought into as a new teacher, you know, um oh yeah and and and then.
Alice Hellard:The other thing that and I talk to the students at Goldsmiths about this sometimes is that when we Google, you know, for images and things on Google, we've got an echo chamber because our algorithm is determining what we see. You know, and I definitely sort of fell prey to that as a teacher oh look, this is really good design. Actually, students in my classes were not interested in in in what I thought was good design that was actually relevant to them. Uh, yeah, there's a bit of a digression though, isn't it away from away from the focus of studio already?
Derek Jones :no, I think it's an important one. Sorry, alison, you tell us to stop talking if you wanted to interrupt, but I think it is an important point. Um, no, studio is not just what one person does with the tools round about them, although that's a really interesting thing. It's not just what two people do collectively. It's not just what three people do or a group do and say this is what it is. There is a social, then a cultural, then all of these other different dimensions do inform studio and studio needs to push back on that as well, and I think you're absolutely right.
Derek Jones :I think when you, when you force a canon on students, you're telling them what is right and what is wrong, and that is not what we need in designers and where we are in the world just now. We do need people capable of forming and creating their own judgment and actually saying no, this is good because dot, dot, dot, rather than this is good because I was told it was. Um, yeah, that's maybe a wider issue in education systems throughout the world not just the uk, by the way um, so, yeah, I do think it is an important point, like what it is and who gets to to take part in this, and that kind of goes back a bit then to this, to to the what really of studio practice what does it?
Alice Hellard:what does it look like for you, derek, when you know when the studio is sort of happening? Because I've got my idea of what I think you mean, but I'd be if can you sort of just, I suppose, uh, go into it in a bit more detail.
Derek Jones :I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll maybe. I'll maybe talk just a little tiny bit about the studio at the Open University, because it is slightly different. It's an online studio and I think most of us have a bit of a notion of what the physical studio is, although maybe it is actually worth looking back at that as well. Anyway, for me, what was really interesting about when we started using a virtual studio in the Open University was just how popular it was.
Derek Jones :I think this was back when web 2.0 was coming in. That was a big buzzword back then, so things like Instagram, sharing images, facebook, was becoming popular. There was already starting to build a bit of a language of engaging with digital media to engage in social behaviours, and that is one of the primary things that you do in studio. The social component in studio is actually way more important than anybody realises, particularly in an education studio where traditionally you are sharing the same space. That kind of sideways looking at other students is actually really important. Lave and Wenger call it legitimate peripheral learning, which is a fancy term for basically just taking in what's happening in the studio Is that another way of saying getting ideas from other sources.
Derek Jones :You know that too, yeah, but not just that. It's also like hearing how somebody pronounces a word or watching how somebody reacts when they get beasted in the studio. I'm going to use the word again there. I'll stop it out with something, if you want no, no, it's fine, I just couldn't.
Alison Hardy:I think it was the accent, I think I was more it probably.
Derek Jones :I can't wait. It'll be like breakfast or something like that, won't it? So it's not as straightforward as just saying I look at other students' work and I compare it. That's one of them, and one of the properties we have is social comparison. It's what's called listening in in the studio. That's the common term for legitimate peripheral learning and you're taking in far more.
Derek Jones :And what we found in our virtual studio was that students who listen in and our equivalent of that was basically just students looking at other students work in the virtual studio. This was one of the biggest behaviors that students were engaging in. They weren't doing what we thought or we wanted them to do as educators, which was, you know, look at other students work, comment on them, have a nice design dialogue and you know everything's perfect. That wasn't what was happening. Students were just looking, they were just watching, they were just being in studio, I would say in a virtual space. And that was the single biggest predictor of student success was whether or not you engaged in those spaces, particularly early in the module.
Derek Jones :And this is entirely virtual. You're not looking at people, you're looking at people through their work. You're actually seeing design identities through people's work. So that, to me was an indicator that we can see this in a digital studio. There's an analogue to what's happening in the physical studio, but it helps us actually see what the detail of what is happening in the physical studio and it would be nice to do that, if you like, in the physical studio and ask what's actually happening there that we might actually take back into the virtual studio. So, yeah, I guess that'll be one thing that I might hint at. I guess what is a studio from a virtual perspective?
Alice Hellard:anyway, and in the studio, in the virtual studio, what are designers doing? What does the practice kind of look like? Are they talking and doing those kind of designerly things like modelling, ideas and stuff like that? Yeah, what does it look like?
Derek Jones :Yeah, all of that stuff, um, but I guess what we you would say they are doing is getting something um from that work that you've just described and then representing it. So it's always it's still a transaction in an online studio. You're still seeing, if you like, not the final result. It might be an interim result, but that's still an artifact. It's still a thing, if you like, not the final result. It might be an interim result, but that's still an artifact. It's still a thing, if you like, that you're sharing. What there's less of is the kind of nuanced detail that what are you doing right now or what are the things round about you in order to get to that thing that you're seeing right now. And what we're doing now is we're trying to now break our studio down a little bit further and trying to get into those moments synchronicity. So that's, if you like, being together at a particular time so that you can actually witness these things actually taking place or so that you can actually share those things taking place, and that's a different challenge.
Alison Hardy:Because that was my thing. I was thinking about your virtual space and the way OU tends to be is about the synchronicity, because there's something very much, if you think about the classroom situation that you've got the children, the students in that space kind of captive for want of a better word for an hour, whereas at OU, how much of this is asynchronous. And so, therefore, what's lost and what's gained, do you have more time for that, listening in to ferment, do you know what I mean? Whereas the, the children, or a virtual, an actual, uh, studio, it's in that moment and because of the busyness of you know particularly children's lives and going from one lesson to another, do they have that time for it to ferment, if that makes sense?
Alice Hellard:can I jump, jump in there? Yeah, sorry, before you get a chance to answer that, derek, what would this? That's really naughty, isn't it? One of one of the things that is making me think about is about, uh, theories of cognition and cognitive neuroscience and the sort of the prevailing thing we've got in in in schools at the moment around cognitive load theory, for example, which is which is very much connected to kind of how we, how we process information in the mind and, and it can be argued to sort of, to sort of further a bit of a separation between mind and body, if you like, the things that we think and the things that we do and how we know and sort of processes of cognition. And designing is really connected to doing, isn't it? It's not just about thinking and what's in the mind, about in terms of those practices around around studio Derek is about using designing and thinking, with the rep, the sort of fit, more physical representations of thinking, designing that we've got around us and in front of us, which kind of excuse me, which kind of links a bit toolas blom and actually in your debates.
Alice Hellard:book um allison talks about, um, the extended cognition yeah yeah, the extended cognition theory for designing, and really he really, really makes it really sort of um, well, it's so useful, so clear that the doing part of part of the externalization that you know, when we, when we use a model or we use post-it notes or mind map or something, we're not just externalizing our thought, we're thinking with that process, with that method. So in a way, what you're the reason. Sorry and sorry again for jumping in there, but but what I'm hearing when you're talking about studio is that is that the practice is, is part of the method of designing, it's part of the process of cognition for designing. That that assemblage of kind of things and people and and practices and all of those kinds of things is part of how, how we do learning in in design. Sorry, that was.
Derek Jones :No, not at all. I mean it does actually connect, believe it or not, because that extension of cognition is actually incredibly important. Studio is one of the most important spaces where you extend cognition. We've got several properties in the book where the different types of extended cognition are actually quite important to recognise. It's not just that it's quite a handy place to put your sketchbook, it's not that it's like where and how you distribute your cognition in space and how that is interrupted.
Derek Jones :There's a lovely paper that I still keep going back to. It's tidy up or don't tidy up after you leave the classroom and that's a reaction against not having fixed studio spaces where you have to completely reset all the desks and tables and chairs and that interruption to cognition. That's incredibly disruptive. I mean it must be incredibly challenging to teach in a secondary situation. I was actually thinking this morning. I do remember the little drawers that we used to have in school. At least you had a personal space that was in the drawer. But even that disruption to where you left off that could be, that could be quite difficult.
Alice Hellard:Well, you know, but in primary school that's still, that's still a thing and kids quite often in primaries have have their own drawer and that's because they are only in one classroom. The classroom is the studio, if you like, but in secondary obviously completely no no, absolutely, and and again, the the studies that show the interruption to cognition.
Derek Jones :That happens if you know you are interrupted. We don't tend to take it seriously. Because you know what designers do is drawings, isn't it? You know that's all they do. They don't do any other kind of stuff. We hide all of the messy sketches. We hide all of the other cognition. We hide all of the pain, all of the emotional stuff. We suppress all that. We don't tell our clients, if you want to think of it that way.
Derek Jones :So that effort, that cognitive effort that goes into actually creating a design, we don't foster it particularly well. Or let me rephrase that I think studio is one of the privileged spaces where you could actually do that in a higher education setting. And it's still that for a lot of disciplines, when it's now eroding, we're actually starting to see an erosion of those kind of cognitive skills. Believe it or not, ai is definitely challenging it in a particular way. We might come back to that later, but your first experience of that is probably still at higher education.
Derek Jones :You may be privileged enough to in a secondary school, maybe in higher art or A-level art. Sorry, I know there's slight differences between the Scottish and English educational systems. But you might, once you get to higher levels, have those little pockets, if you like, of personalised space, whether it's a set-up that you're painting or whatever it might be. But they're quite rare. You won't experience them until you get to higher education. Yeah, and that can be challenging because that leads you into the situation of well, here is a space, it's up to you to make use of it, and you're not even kind of told that. You're not even told that you can inhabit.
Alison Hardy:You have to almost kind of learn it through a series of steps, repetitions, rituals, um, yeah, anyway, there we go, yeah, you're making me think I I remember when I did my first degree at brunel so mine was industrial design with education and there was a studio and I just found it intimidating and never went in that space. There was never any absolutely that space. There was never any absolutely being made in, welcome into that space or you know, you just felt like it was the, a particular group and you sort of felt excluded and therefore that then sends a message that you're not a designer, and particularly as I was on the education part as well. But I was also thinking, derek, when you were talking there about that studio space.
Alison Hardy:Think about children often have that at home. Not all children have that privilege of having that space, whether it's their desk space in their bedrooms or somewhere where you know, and they they create that um to to be their, their studio space where they can leave things and pick things back up. You know we're all sat um at home in our own studio space, but it's safe, isn't it? Because we're not bringing anybody else into it and nobody's nobody's making a judgment and it is. It is frightening and you're absolutely right that we've kind of taken that away.
Alison Hardy:Where it's become that what's shown is the neatness that we used to call it neat nonsense where they put borders on everything.
Alison Hardy:Um, you know, I I tried to bring sketchbooks into into my department, but it was a real challenge because you've got limited time and people are looking for what they need to assess and it's all, that's it. I'd be interested to kind of hear thoughts about how how this practice I mean that's some of the challenges, I suppose how this practice can be brought into particularly secondary, to start building it in. I don't know, but those are my thoughts. I'm now expecting somebody to come on and go. Well, actually that's really interesting. But can we now talk about this? On and go? Well, actually that's really interesting. But can we now talk about this?
Alice Hellard:that's not a dig alice at all, but you know well it just I just was really struck with how these things are kind of connected and trying and thinking about relating it. Actually, you know, one of the big challenges in in secondary education at the moment is our sort of prevailing frameworks and systems for thinking about education, doing education and, you know, for design and technology, certainly a very narrow focus on cognitive neuroscience approaches to learning is actually can actually be a bit of an issue. But also there are other things, you know, and lots of kind of buzzwords floating around at the moment, like things like dialogic practice and is is more of a thing within certain frameworks and and how we have high quality, um teacher student talk and I see that as a massive opportunity around, you know. Or I see studio practice as a massive opportunity around um, things like that, because for me, so when I, when I go back and think about how I was trying to trying to approach, uh, my sort of enculturation approaches in the classroom, really really fundamental to that was the literacies of design and technology and that's about opportunities for dialogue between student and teacher and student and student and also designer and designer, but also designer and the thing that they're designing, student and the thing that they're kind of working on.
Alice Hellard:That's a dialogue too. The thing that they're kind of working on, that's a dialogue too. And so, um, we need words for that, but we also need kind of ways of doing it. That's part of the literacy of it, and it's not literacy, it's not just about the language that we speak, it's the language of, of how we do things as well in in designing, I guess. Um, so I sort of my tendency, my tendency is to look at those frameworks that we have to operate within and see opportunities around that.
Alice Hellard:And Alison, you touched on assessment being a challenge. Already. That is a challenge, and quite a concrete one in some ways. Yeah, and quite a concrete one in some ways. Yeah, that's my opener, I know that Kay was in last.
Alison Hardy:I know that Kay was in talking about assessment with Goldsmith students, wasn't she? This week, I think? And I had a great conversation with Kay Stables at the weekend about assessment in D&T. I've got a rather controversial podcast coming out this week where it's a subscription one, where I say maybe our assessment system isn't fit for purpose the non-examined assessment maybe it's time for it.
Derek Jones :I completely agree.
Alice Hellard:Anyway, there we go. That's a whole other topic. Sorry, that's another conversation.
Derek Jones :Well, could I jump in on that and actually just do a quick rant conversation? Well, could I jump in on that and actually just do a quick rant? If we are talking about I'm going to take like you cannot have multiple ideas in education and multiple policies contradicting one another and sadly, most of the time we do okay. So if you're going to do cognitive load theory, then you cannot also then deny all the other stuff that goes with how designers deal with cognitive load. For example, um, you know, at maximum capacity you're using 40 of your body's energy in your thinking as a designer. It's absolutely huge, it's absolutely fantastic.
Derek Jones :But that depends on things like extended cognition. It depends on offloading it in different spaces. It absolutely depends. Alice, you're absolutely right on the dialogue with the object. You offload so much to the object, to the representations that you create with that, the materiality, yet none of that is valorized or finally treated as a knowledge object. It's never actually treated as a thing in and of itself. So if the two things are completely and utterly contradictory, then you do not have constructively lined up, you know, learning in any sense whatsoever, and that's because a lot of this stuff is being written by people who are not designers yeah, yeah absolutely.
Alice Hellard:That's not a controversial thing, to say, but that's the problem isn't it also to do with with, you know, the assessment tail wagging wagging the rest of the dog? You know assessment drives so much of how we do things and um, and really that that what that boils down to is kind of accountability measures more than anything else. So actually it's completely de-centers in the end that the, the, the learner themselves, um and and is and is very reductive, but in in terms of kind of how that looks in the classroom, it can only lead to a very linear, stage-by-stage kind of process of designing and making, because you know it is really challenging within that framework to think of how you can assess group work, quality of conversations, the development of an idea, when you've got nothing concrete in front of you to look at, to represent the learning that took place, as it were, in those kind of traditional senses. Yeah, absolutely.
Derek Jones :Yeah, I mean. That presupposes, though, that what you're interested in assessing is the learning well um, again. Well, it's not just the assessment tail wagging the dog. It's then the purpose of education in society wagging the tail of the tail of the dog, and you know that is completely and utterly deterministic or transactional and I also think the other, the other side of it sorry, I'm going to just butt in there it's.
Alison Hardy:It's about assessing the learning, but we need to define what it is that they're actually learning. And when we're using this very uh, politically laden word about knowledge and then we're not defining clearly for ourselves within the subject what we mean by knowledge and I'm kind of, you know, I think it then becomes very difficult for us to say that the learning we're assessing, that we need to assess, is about growth of knowledge, skills, qualities, adaptability, which brings back to, you know, design and technology capability. You know, so I've done this work for Ofsted, looking at what does the research say for design and technology, about what is high quality curriculum and such, and I found that really interesting because obviously, you know, going back to what you said about cognitive load and the science, that's been very driven and the Ofsted framework has been very driven by that. So it was really interesting to look at the literature, knowing that I had to work within that framework, whether I liked it or not, work within that framework, whether I liked it or not, and it was like a big decision about do I do? I do this, but we do need to do it because we need to enable the design and technology community to have those conversations. And and I actually found that really refreshing because actually, what I thought Ofsted was saying was not actually what they were saying does that make sense? They weren't trying to make design and technology fit something. It was like, genuinely, what does the research say?
Alison Hardy:And so when we looked at knowledge, okay, they used the word knowledge. Actually, what was then coming out of it was skills, and again, I think we should be really careful when we use the word skills, because that's laid and isn't we talking about thinking skills, which are really difficult to what do we mean even by that? But I I think there's this lack of conversation around. What do we mean by knowledge? And therefore, what are children learning and why are they learning it and what? What does it? Do you know? What do they do with it? That's, that's the key thing, isn't? It is, and it's not about just knowledge about what the material is that you clothes are made of. It's that designally approach, that design of thinking, that that learning to listen. You know, go back to what you were saying earlier Derek, about that.
Alison Hardy:Listening in, you know that's they learn. They learn to do that by watching by. You know that doesn't just magically become, doesn't it? It's like me going into this design studio at university. It's you kind of have to be taught to feel that's your space. I mean thinking back to that spectrum anyway, I feel like. I'm I'm rambling now, so I've had a moment to speak. No, it's definitely a relevant point.
Derek Jones :I mean, I was sorry, I was had a moment to speak. No, it's definitely a relevant point.
Derek Jones :I mean, sorry, alice, did you want to come in? No, no, you go. Well, I mean, it was one of the hardest bits to write. In the book we've got a section on like general educational sort of foundations and bits and pieces, and one of them is knowledge. And again I've said it already, I think, earlier in the session today I don't think we take seriously design knowledge or the types of knowledge that designers hold, whether it's materiality, whether it's embodied knowledge, experiential knowledge. We don't take it seriously because the time you get to secondary education, seven, eight, nine years probably, maybe a little bit less at least seven years of being told this is or these are the forms of suitable knowledge. This is the way that you describe knowledge. People who know things wear glasses, they read, they write. That's what they do, that is what knowledge is and that's not what knowledge is for 99% of people. Okay. So we suppress that at our peril, and we have been suppressing it for a long period of time. And, by the way, I think other disciplines really really benefit from embodied knowledge, particularly in maths, for example. Embodied cognitive maths is really important. Material maths is really actually quite useful to people.
Derek Jones :Anyway, that's a bit of a diatribe. I think maybe internally, alison, that would be useful to have a conversation about would be what do we mean by our knowledges? What does that mean for students? I'll give you two examples of that. One would be simple knowledge at one end. We've already talked about it enculturation. Just knowing certain words like symmetry, like, say, balance or all of these things, and not even knowing them necessarily, knowing what the definition might be, but then knowing how it's applied in different contexts, how designers use that word in order to do different things. So you've got the knowledge itself, that the explicit knowledge, the declared facts, the tacit stuff at the other end, which is the well, how is that used in practice? What do you do with symmetry? And then you've got the really tacit stuff, and this is important. It's really important because we use tacit knowledge all the time as designers.
Derek Jones :That's knowledge that you cannot symbolise. It's knowledge that you cannot write down. Or let me put it another way Maybe you could write it down. You know, for all those determinists out there and those learning outcomes, that's absolutely fine, I've got no problem with that. But if you write down how it is that you judge and create a sketch, you would end up with 50 000 pages of words as opposed to just spending five seconds demonstrating.
Derek Jones :And it's that type of knowledge, that other type of knowledge that's also quite important, that is sometimes transmitted in higher education studios. Perhaps I don't know, it depends on the teacher, depends on what knowledge domain the teacher comes from. In a secondary setting that can be harder you know to cover to, to demonstrate that, and then you go right up to the far end where it's actually attitudes and dispositions, not knowledge, that's actually more important. So the attitude that I bring to design setting for a client is far more important than sometimes my skills and abilities. It's actually just me being there. That can actually be quite good. And that's before we get to the design superpowers, the ability to come up with good ideas under pressure or all of these other extended cognitive things. So I think there's a wide range. I think it would be well worth having that conversation, alison.
Alice Hellard:Yeah, massively. I think one of the things that I agree with with all of that and I think one of the things that that can help us to sort of locate this in the classroom as well is is I've always thought of of a big purpose of design and technology education secondary schools to develop design and technological literacy, to understand the world around us and how to, how to, how to know it, how to use it, how to talk about it, how to how to experience it and and how to make it work for us as well. And and and I was always really struck with john dacre's definition of of design and technology, or technological literacy, and he talked about it being an assemblage. You know, um of loads of, you know all the kind of the things around us, um, but that it's an ongoing process of becoming. It's not possible to to ever be technologically literate, because the world around us is constantly changing.
Alice Hellard:The assemblage is always shifting and and rebalancing, and, and that is much more, that's thinking about knowledge as much more a kind of way of being, isn't it? It's much more about um, it's about knowledge as kind of well, knowledge as practice, but just knowing how to respond, react you know, rewrite all of those kinds of things, one's own experience in the world, and that to me seems like a really important aspect of design and technology education, when you know we might well be sort of educating future designers and all of that. You know all of that kind of higher end of knowledge stuff, but actually also we're talking about how to know ourselves in the technological world, absolutely.
Alison Hardy:So, on that note, because I'm conscious of time, I'm going to ask you both if you'd like to wrap up with some kind of takeaway points, because I think we need to come back to this. I don't have to go yeah. I can see that I'm going to blow your head off with takeaway points.
Derek Jones :Part two.
Alison Hardy:Yeah, right, but I'm just thinking. I've got people listening, a whole variety of people listening from, predominantly in the UK but internationally, involved in design and technology, education, a whole variety of ways, predominantly teachers. What's a couple of takeaways or something that they might kind of go away and think about from this? Because if they're anything like me I mean I think this is our third conversation about this topic in preparation for today, about this topic in preparation for today their heads will have blown off, got loads to think about. What's something that they can kind of take away and just reflect on, think about, read, look at Derek, I'm going to start with you.
Derek Jones :That is a tough one. Unfortunately, the book is coming out next year and basically this is not a plug for the book. I am so sorry it's not for the book, it's free not okay, so you haven't actually mentioned the book.
Alison Hardy:You've only mentioned it but not said what the book is.
Derek Jones :So there you go I guess the only reason I mention it is because it will set out um. It's nearly 60 properties that we've um outlined in studio um, and they range from things that you might recognize. You know, things like um making or artifacts, things that you might recognise. You know things like making or artefacts, things that you would see in studio, things that you'd do in studio, that are quite obvious. But there's also things like serendipity, you know, luck playing a part, no front, the fact that a studio is organised spatially very differently, right to the pragmatic that a studio costs money. Anyway, what I'd love to do, because we've been looking at the higher education setting for this I'd love to use this almost as a starting point to then ask which of these might be usefully. I'm not saying translated or transferred, maybe that there's already something far better happening in the secondary school setting, but I would love to start a conversation that might ask the question oh, that's interesting, might we try this in here or might we try this in there, because I'm pretty sure that we are incomplete in terms of the properties we have. There's probably some there's.
Derek Jones :I'll give you an example. It's a stupid, stupid example. We don't have a word for it in higher education it's called active teaching. Okay, so we had to come up with this term, active teaching, simply because, um, there isn't a term for what you do as a good primary school teacher, a good secondary school teacher, which is wander the classroom looking for opportunities for students learning. Ok, you do it all the time in the studio, but we never talk about it, we never actually express it as a pedagogical thing.
Derek Jones :What are the different techniques that you use as a teacher to wander through the studio to look for what the things that you look for? Is it people? Is it things? Is it doing? Is it material? I don't know. We had to kind of like create that term because we just do it in studio and I know that secondary school and particularly primary school teachers, it's part of their embedded practice. Is that constantly wandering the room, constantly asking the question where else could learning take place here? So there's a thing that we've just identified here that you already know in a secondary setting and we need to get I've said this the last podcast as well, alison, we need far better links between secondary and higher education discussion. Yeah, it's just not good enough that we're having separate conversations.
Alison Hardy:But this is hopefully part of that space.
Derek Jones :Definitely, absolutely and yes, and thank you for the opportunity for it also, and it really is appreciated now.
Alison Hardy:I'm loving the conversations alice over to you.
Alice Hellard:So there's, so there's so much more I want to discuss I know about studio and, uh, you know, but I suppose in particular um about pedagogy and sort of pedagogical kind of content knowledge and how we're confident to be sort of designers of learning experiences and all of those kinds of things. So I guess for the moment my big takeaway is and I think I'm right, I think this would align with what you've kind of been talking about, derek, but I well, I hope actually is that um in the in the class, in the secondary classroom, setting studio doesn't necessarily need to be a kind of all-encompassing approach and actually that is just um, not not something that that is actually seems that attainable in the current kind of educational landscape anyway, but it's so worth just unpicking and and thinking about aspects that might contribute to this idea of sort of studio um, and and part of that is about, you know, thinking through pck, pedagogical knowledge, how we turn our subject knowledge into sort of meaningful, engaging learning encounters, learning experiences opportunities. But a big part of that is also risk, and something that I think we haven't really talked about in this podcast is not having a predetermined outcome. We've touched on it, but I think we haven't sort of unpicked that for studio and actually that is really really important, I think, to this, and you know certainly my own experience in the classroom.
Alice Hellard:I was a head of department in the second school I was teaching, so I had, I had the, the, I was in the position to be able to change things and to to rethink units of work and the length of time we were going to spend on this, that and the other, and you know what it kind of all looked like, and that was that was I was very lucky to be in that position and that was that was I was very lucky to be in that position. It's very hard to kind of to do that if, if you're not in those kind of positions, and sometimes, even if you are, it's very hard to do. So I think, just, you know, having a think about setting up opportunities for there not being, you know, a predetermined outcome for letting it come through. Letting it come through, um, it is really really can be really really fruitful, but also challenging, because how do you assess those things and how do you, you know, organize resources for those things? You know?
Alice Hellard:yeah, that sort of goes alongside the knowledge of designing stuff um but there's just so many opportunities around it to to think about different ways of doing things.
Alison Hardy:I love how I ask you both just to sum up and just give me a night. It's like a whole other podcast. You've just gone into the pair of you know no, but that's that's, that's grand, I mean.
Alison Hardy:I mean, people listening must be thinking, will think. Well, allison didn't say very much, I think you know, because I'm just in awe, genuinely, genuinely. Um, this has been a huge learning. Every conversation I've had with you two has been a huge learning for me. Um, but I'm just going to come back, uh, derrick, and pick on something that you just said about this, uh, higher education and secondary talking.
Alison Hardy:So, um, it'll be coming out soon on social media, but it's I'm organizing, hopefully at nottingham trent, if I can get funding. If I can't, it'll be online an an event in January for higher education people involved in design education to come together and hear about what's happening in secondary, to share some of that knowledge and to start to think about what are these stakeholders thinking about secondary and what the synergy um might be? Um organizing that with uh daniel latham, who's at ual and university of the arts in london. Um, partly as part of the curriculum review that's going on in england at the moment, but also just to kind of feel that this is the right time and the right space to start. So it'd be great to have both of you involved in that.
Derek Jones :I'll send you details but that'd be awesome, great yeah but just as a aside, we need to.
Alison Hardy:Yeah, we need. There's another two episodes here. We could do like more about design studio and there's something about knowledge, but you know, I mean people listening expect those in 2025 and 2026. The amount of time it takes us to get this together took a long time, but no, but thank you both of you.
Alison Hardy:Um, just just really awesome, and I do, and one of the conversations that we had previously the three of us and separately about this is alice, you talked about all of this resonating do you know what I mean? And and speaking to you as your identity, and we didn't even get onto um, some of that, some of those big words around ontology and epistemology, around this um, but listening to you two talk, I find uh, kind of quite emotional in terms of hearing your thinking and I want to say belief and drive. Do you know? Know what I mean? But just that exploration, that designerly way of just being here in this conversation and the way you two talk. So thank you very much to both of you for the privilege of having the time with you both. It's just fab, thank you.
Alice Hellard:Well, thanks for giving it to us, and I really enjoyed listening to Derek talking about studio and helping me to make sense of that. It's really really useful. Thanks, derek.
Derek Jones :No, thank you. As you say, alison, there's two or three conversations I still want to have now that risk and failure thing particularly yeah.
Alison Hardy:So thanks again, both of you. I'm Dr Alison Hardy and you've been listening to the Talking D&T podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, then do subscribe, on whatever platform you use, and do consider leaving a review, as it does help others find the podcast. I do the podcast because I want to support the D&T community in developing their practice, so please do share the podcast with your D&T community. If you want to respond to something I've talked about or have an idea for a future episode, then either leave me a voice memo via SpeakPipe or drop me an email. You can find details about me, the podcast and how to connect with me on my website, dralisonhardycom. Also, if you want to support the podcast financially, you can become a patron. Links to SpeakPipe, patreon and my website are in
