Exploring Design and Technology research at PATT40 with Dr. Matt McLain

Step into the world of the PATT 40 conference with Dr. Matt McLain, who shares his  insights and experiences from this groundbreaking event. As the conference chair, Matt explains the conference's aim to unite design and technology research, and classroom practice in a meaningful symphony. In this episode we talk about  the conference's emphasis on diversity, its aim to incorporate teachers in research, and the celebration of plurality within D&T education. The PATT conference is the international space for sharing D&T research and the dedication to making academic research not just accessible but actionable for educators on the front lines.

We  discuss the personal triumphs and collective achievements of the recent PATT40 conference.

The expertise of three teachers, who I'm working with, brought a co-authored paper to life, as an example of how the conference was committed to  teacher-involved research.

The Liverpool PATT conference was a landmark as the first completely face to face meeting since the COVID pandemic. As we close the episode, Matt and mine's thoughts turn to the future—pondering a  position that beckons with the potential to further academic and teaching aspirations.

(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)

Links
PATT40 papers
PATT40 website
EdD at Nottingham Trent University

Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?

What do you think? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. 

Transcript

Alison: 0:56

So welcome to the first episode of my series about PATT 40. So PATT 40 was the conference that happened in end of October, early November 2023, hosted by Liverpool John Moores University. So that's why I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Matt McLain. Matt was the chair of the conference. I'm going to come to Matt in a moment, but I'm just going to set a little bit of the context about why I'm doing this series for the podcast. So people who know me will know that I enjoy doing research.

Alison: 1:27

I enjoy writing about research. I'm not sure I should say enjoy writing, but you know, I think we really need to be writing in the D&T community about the research that we're doing in practice, as well as researchers like me coming to schools and places to do research. So the PATT conference Matt really set it up so that it was accessible for teachers. The dates we tried to fit around school half terms as much as we could so that teachers could come along and engage. So and some teachers did, which is why I've decided to do this series, because some of those teachers are going to come on the podcast and talk about research that they heard, what they enjoyed about it, what they learned from it and how it's shaping what they think and what they do about design and technology. So to set the first part of that series is to help people kind of understand the context for the conference.

Alison: 2:18

I've got Matt in as the chair. That means that he led the organisation, was the face of PATT 40. It's called number 40 because it was the 40th although I think we did lose some numbers possibly along the way and it was the first one that was fully face to face since 2019, sort of before COVID. So it was a really exciting conference and so I'm really pleased that Matt's here. So, matt, can you tell us a little bit about how it came to be at Liverpool John Moores setting it up and kind of what you decided the focus was going to be?

Matt: 2:51

Yeah, yeah. Well, initially it wasn't going to be me chairing it. It was going to be a colleague that was taking the role and, due to unforeseen circumstances, they were unable to carry on and I almost let it slip through my hands. But I took a long hard to think about it and I decided to step up and say you know, I will chair. This is too good an opportunity.

Matt: 3:14

I really wanted to come back to the UK and I really wanted teachers to be involved with it. So part of my motivation, like yourself, alison, really wanting to get teachers involved that's our research is is not useless, but it's severely hampered if it doesn't get into the hands of teachers and I'm more than just trainee teachers where where we tend to have most, most influence. So that was a real driving force. So the the committee, which has made of people from all different organisations it was just me from Liverpool John Moores, so there's yourself, alison, and Sarah Davies from Nottingham Trends, there was Bhav from Brighton, David Morrison-L ove from Glasgow, and we had we had teachers as well. So I, Simone, we had better be careful to miss anyone, Claire.

Alison: 4:11

Yeah, I thought you'd started. I thought this could put a link in the show notes Excellent.

Matt: 4:16

I wrote in some of my doctoral students, so Cal, Phil and Sarah. Have I missed anyone there?

Alison: 4:28

I'm just looking down my list, but if we have, I'll put the details in the show notes, so everybody does get full credit.

Matt: 4:34

Yeah, yeah, but it was really, really important to get teachers involved with that because, well, selfishly, if we think about our own legacy as academics universities who's going to take on when we retire and when we pop our clogs? So we need to have that sort of throughput of people coming into research. But, most importantly, we need to make it relevant to teachers and have teachers involved. So that was really a driving force behind it. So the theme so if I remember what the theme was, it was something about plurality and diversity. There hasn't really been a lot written about diversity in its broader sense. In D&T, there's been a lot written about gender. There's been not very much written about special educational needs. There's been virtually nothing written about LGBTQ type issues, race or ethnicity.

Matt: 5:43

Yeah, I did that stuff in the debates book, but there's not.

Alison: 5:46

There's some context from New Zealand about Indigenous communities, but it's very, very scarce.

Matt: 5:53

Yeah, yeah, so there was a hope to encourage a bit more of that and there wasn't much that came through with that. But that's okay, because what tends to happen with pets is that we put out a theme, we give suggestions and people write about what they're passionate about and they come and share. It was really important to foreground some of those contemporary issues and give an opportunity for them to be shared. Yeah, so that was some of that motivation.

Alison: 6:23

So what were you hoping then? I mean, you've talked a little bit there about teachers being engaged. What else were you hoping would be an outcome from the conference?

Matt: 6:32

Yeah, I mean I was hoping we would get a wide diversity of people from different countries and we did that. I think we've probably got the broadest diversity of countries being represented about 18 different countries from as far east as Japan, west as the US. I think most northerly was norway, most southerly was South Africa. So we've got some gaps. We've got some clear gaps. We don't really have anyone from Latin America that's engaged and we have very few from Africa who engage, but we are expanding. We've got an increasing community of Asian academics.

Alison: 7:18

So I'm going to just hold there and put ourselves. I've heard the dog come back.

Matt: 7:22

Yeah, no worries Okay. Oh, you mean I should. Oh, there they are.

Alison: 7:26

I'm back, but we now have a dog running around. We're still recording, which is fine, because he's been out with a dog walker and it's three girls that he goes out with, so he comes back he's absolutely hyper.

Matt: 7:37

Yeah, he's mad Right.

Alison: 7:42

So, we got to talk. We ended on countries that were involved and we wanted to kind of bring that in. Okay, so let's start again. So, matt, that's really interesting about getting all those different countries, and I think there are issues aren't there around timings and such and travel. So was there anything else that you were hoping for in terms of bringing people together for those few days.

Matt: 8:05

Yeah, I mean I think we tried a few different things because I think one of the important and valuable things about a conference and an in-person conference is the opportunity to talk and have informal conversations but also to have the middle ground. So one of the days we had a panel discussion about knowledge in design and technology to begin that discussion and that sort of giving a space to philosophize and think about the subject. But, as you said, getting teachers involved as participants and as presenters in the research was a real surf central element. So it was really delighted to get support from a number of organizations who support ID and T and a particular technology supplier for a teacher to attend the conference and you're going to be interviewing Neil.

Alison: 9:02

Yes, neil. Neil's going to talk about a paper that he found particularly interesting. He sent with the details, so I'll keep that under my hat for the moment.

Matt: 9:09

Excellent, yeah yeah, I know that was a riddle, I don't know, because there's usually teachers doing PhDs who come particularly from Ireland and Sweden at the moment, but we don't often get many teachers. But we had a significant number of teachers from the UK. Considering we had about 130 delegates, there was probably somewhere between 5 and 10% of those were involved in schools in some form, which was really good, plus having the well, particularly having those who were presenting. So, yeah, that was a real delight. It's really what I want to see more of, and I know you want to see more of as the subject develops and grows in this country and beyond.

Alison: 10:03

Well, I had a co-authored paper with three teachers in a project that they're now leading, that, obviously, due to my trampolining accident, I didn't actually make the conference, but they were able to present, you know, and that was great. I mean, it wasn't great that I wasn't there, but actually worked out brilliantly because it was their project. It's seeing more of that, isn't it? But it's not just the people like me and you, who is kind of part of our job to do it.

Matt: 10:30

Yeah, exactly, and that sort of whole thing of facilitating teachers to do that, not just seeing the points of it and not just seeing themselves as consumers of research but part of the participants in research, is really important because it is an under-researched subject and what research is out there isn't necessarily accessible to teachers. That was a bit of research that presented with Daniella, another teacher, and Professor Kay Stables and yourself back in Pat 39 in Newfoundla, which was a hybrid conference last year that sort of looked at. There's a definite interest from teachers in research but a real sense of not knowing how to engage, not knowing where to get quality research from, and a frustration with the very sort of cookie cutter, one size fits all offering that's being forced in many cases on them by senior leadership teams or indirectly through the government.

Alison: 11:41

So the conference is over and done with, and Sarah is going to come and talk on about her editorial role and what that? Involved and with highlights and the things that she's taken away from that. What are the things that you personally, professionally, have taken from the conference? And then I'm going to ask you a little bit about so what's next? You know, because it's great to do a conference, but what do you do with it next? But first, you, what were your? What have you got from it?

Matt: 12:09

Yeah, well, I guess I real sense of fulfilment because I had the joy of bringing all these people to Liverpool City of. Love to the Pat conference. It's a community I love. I really enjoyed working with the committee and I couldn't have asked for a better group of people working in that. Yeah, I can't really express, as you can hear, how grateful I am for her.

Alison: 12:42

Let's blow Sarah's trumpet from her, but she can hear this. I mean, sarah is one of the best completed finishes that I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I love working with Sam a great starter, but not necessarily the best of finishes. But Sarah is brilliant at finishing and pinning things down and getting it done, which is exactly what it is.

Matt: 12:59

I don't know if it's frozen for you, but it's frozen for me. It froze there for me. Just a roundabout. Completed finisher. Oh right.

Alison: 13:09

Sarah is a really good completed finisher. I mean, that's why I like working with her, because I'm a good starter and she's a good finisher. She really kind of nails me down on the actions and make sure we tick them off.

Matt: 13:19

Yeah, yeah.

Alison: 13:20

But yeah, she's really good so I'm going to get her on to talk about her experience. So that's kind of the personal professional. But how many papers were presented at the conference? We're like 70 or 80?.

Matt: 13:33

That's right.

Alison: 13:34

How many papers?

Matt: 13:37

Oh, papers, yeah, so the number of papers was just under 80, so it was about 78, I think. I think in all the information it said 79, but I double counted one paper for that. But yeah, it was the biggest proceedings we've had for a PAT conference. It's the biggest attendance, the biggest diversity of countries. So I mean I shouldn't really be proud of that, but I am quite proud of that.

Alison: 14:05

You should. Yeah, it was good. It was also that thirst, I think, wasn't it that people wanted to come back face to face and see people that they'd not seen for a long time?

Matt: 14:14

Yeah, yeah, because I was at the point thinking, okay, so I'm going to aim for and say, 80 is my target number of people to come. I'm going to pessimistically say it could be as low as 60. I'm going to be optimistically saying it could be as high as 100. And then, as the day got closer to the end of bookings, the numbers were going up and up and up and I was starting to think, oh right, we need another venue here, we need somewhere that's going to be big enough to fit everyone.

Matt: 14:43

So, yeah, just seeing the response, I think as well. For me that's a validation that I've got a place in the community, that I'm not at the end of my journey, but I'm certainly farther on than I was several years ago and it's given me the opportunity to do things. I've recently become a member of the editorial board for the Design and Technology, education and International Journal, so it's opening doors for things like that. And, yeah, I guess for me thinking about what's next, I have sort of ummed an ad about whether I should go to the next step in terms of my academic profile and apply for what's called readership in our organization, which is like one step towards being a professor, like similar to your associate professor.

Alison: 15:39

Yeah, it's the equivalent of the associate prof for me.

Matt: 15:42

Yeah. So yeah, I've sort of pretty much decided that in the new year for the next round, I'm going to apply for that and that will. I've got to think carefully about how I'm going to label that, whether I'm going to specifically label it as a D&T readership, or whether it's going to be broader than that, to represent my current role at LJMU. But I had sort of put that on hold for quite a number of years and I even said, well, I might, or I probably would never do it, yeah.

Alison: 16:14

But so yeah, I mean so yeah, that's why it's really interesting to get involved in these things, isn't it? Because they kind of do open up doors and they make you think differently about about you. So we've got all the papers. What are you doing with the people? What are you doing with how? How are you building on any of those papers or bringing any of that community together beyond Pat to do stuff? Have? You got any ideas or thoughts of things there that you want to share.

Matt: 16:43

Yeah, yeah. Well, the first thing that we're going to be doing in Early in the new year and Sarah and I have just put a date in the diary for early January to talk about this is we're going to put a call out to the, the Pat 40 delegates, for so Proposals for articles for a specialist you with the D&T education international journal I Writers who want to, and I've got more to say in a sort of longer length of time. So six thousand rather than three thousand words. Yeah, it'll be a more, an even more rigorous peer review process. So so we're looking forward to Having a specialist you. So at the moment we're trying to decide whether we keep it broad and open to let people submit Whatever they want. I On. The risk of that is we could get inundated with with more papers than we know what to do with, or to narrow it down to something that might make it a bit more manageable, but then that excludes some really valuable papers and some really insightful authors.

Alison: 17:53

That's one publication that's planned.

Matt: 17:56

That would come out 2025 is that the idea. Long time to kind of come into fruition, don't they. I'm hoping late 2024, but I need to speak to Kay Stables to sort of Work backwards from all of the processes that need to go in. Yeah, so what's that? What's the earliest we can do it? So so I'm expecting it lied be late 2024 or early 2025. I Might I should come out after the next patch, pat 41, which is in Nanjing, which I really am hoping that I'm gonna get funding to go there.

Matt: 18:31

So I need to China, to my bucket list Places.

Alison: 18:38

We did a special edition that came out from pat 39 and only came out in this summer and that was, you know, quite a while after pat 39, because these things do take a lot of time, but it is really good. I mean, yeah, and go back to the idea about getting teachers involved yeah, it, all the papers involved teachers, yeah, so it's a good, it's a good thing to do. So you've got the, you've got the hope of a special edition journal. Yeah, any anything else.

Matt: 19:03

Yeah, yeah, there is one, one other massive project coming up which will come to the moment, but but also another interesting one that came out. I got an email from John Wells who I I here's the Journal of Technology Education over, yeah, in Virginia in.

Matt: 19:19

America. So I got an email from him yesterday encouraging me to submit something to the JTE. So so that's something that I have to think about and add into my Limelan of things. But but the big project I guess coming up is after and maybe I'm a fool for doing this after after having gone through the Editorial process for the Bloomsbury handbook of technology education which came out earlier last last year.

Matt: 19:51

That was really aimed at people in universities. It's a very expensive book, as they tend to be, so it's really the sort of thing that will be in university libraries and and people doing PGCEs, yeah, or masters or doctorates will will engage with access, yeah.

Matt: 20:07

Yeah, yeah, but but I've got an idea for something which I am I is Gonna be more accessible for For teachers, cost-wise, and and the idea behind that is to use an approach called systematic Literature review or evidence review and to look at what research says about particular aspects of teaching, design and technology.

Matt: 20:35

So it wouldn't include all of the sort of technical stuff in each of the chapters. It'd be focusing on what does the literature actually say about, whether it's about how to teach design, how to manage project work and so on. So the plan is sometime next year to put out an invitation for proposals for chapters in that. But the idea is they will all follow the same sort of structure. So there will be a chapter outlining what the methodology is and everyone will follow broadly a similar methodology and protocol for conducting that. And the aim is that, alongside your two books with Routledge that are fundamental books for particularly for teacher education here in the UK, hopefully this will will then provide access to easily digestible research findings that teachers and trainee teachers can use. So that's I'm talking about Loomsbury, about that, and you know that's quite an exciting project.

Matt: 21:48

I just need to find some time to refocus on that.

Alison: 21:51

Yeah, yeah, it is finding the time and there's so many opportunities. Isn't it about selecting to make sure you kind of putting your energies in the right place and you're possibly sometimes a really good starter as well and you need some to help you finish. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Matt: 22:05

Yes, yeah, I think I do very much like working with groups of people and whilst at a push I can sort of, I can be a finisher, at a push, it's not my most natural or comfortable position to be in.

Alison: 22:22

No no, we're working together isn't always a great idea. That's why we need to share it with us, yeah we've got lots of ideas yeah yeah, I think I kind of go looking for the next shiny thing.

Matt: 22:32

That's my problem, yeah yeah, I think if we listed all the, all the ideas that we should come up between but either between us or individually it'd be quite scary.

Alison: 22:41

I know the amount of books I could have written you know I've thought through, but yeah, yeah but the search really exciting. I think it's just interesting to share with you know where a conference starts, and that it doesn't just end with the conference, but other things come out of it and where the conference sat, within what you believe and what you're trying to do. So I think that works really well.

Matt: 23:02

Yeah, yeah. And also something that I'm delighted to be working with two doctoral students so I had three ones on a leave of absence, so but people who are teachers of design and technology doing educational doctorates. So that's really exciting for me because that is research that's being done in school, which is structured, which is quality, which is really going to hopefully induct those three individuals into being researchers, whether they stay in schools or whether they go on in a future date into universities, I don't know, but I would certainly hope to be working in the future with more D&T teachers either doing traditional research by PhD, or I mean I couldn't recommend highly enough the EdD.

Alison: 23:54

Yeah, we do the EdD I'm programme support for busy teachers. Yeah, yeah. So we've got a couple EdD, D&T people and it is really exciting to kind of work with that and they're suited to that pace. But yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes because I did a podcast about doing an EdD. Yeah, yeah so people can kind of find out a bit more about that.

Matt: 24:12

Yeah, there's also been some conversations. Discussions about whether to have something more UK based maybe not something quite as as high as Pat, but something that gives an opportunity both for researchers and academics in the UK and teachers to come and present, and whether it's like short discussion papers, like two sides of A4. So you're off the other idea there. You see on YouTube.

Alison: 24:41

Right in case, I'm going to stop us there, because I think people listening will be like this could just keep going on.

Alison: 24:45

The pair of them just coming up with ideas, but no, that's been really great, matt, and thanks very much to the introductory episodes for this series about Pat Forty and I'm hoping, as you listen to the episodes when they come out, that you'll hear people talking about teachers, talking about research they've done and that they've presented and that they've learned from at the conference and that will really make you see that there has been an impact to the work you've done on the Pat Forty. So thanks very much. Matt, as a as a as a delegate, but non-delegate, you know. Hopefully you'll see the impact of what you've done, which would be brilliant, so thank you very much.

Alison: 25:19

Matt for chairing the conference and for, yeah, taking that step to have the confidence to go yeah, I can do this and to make that happen.

Matt: 25:26

So right.

Alison: 25:27

I'm going to end there, so thank you very much. Thanks for your time today, Matt.

Matt: 25:31

You're welcome pleasure Bye.