In this episode of Talking D&T, I delve into the complex topic of teaching children to understand and articulate the agency and values inherent in designed objects. Inspired by my recent conversation with Alice about object agency, I reflect on the challenges and importance of equipping students with the knowledge and language necessary to critically examine the technological world around them.
Throughout the episode, I explore the limitations of simplistic frameworks like Access FM and emphasise the need for teachers to strategically select content that builds students' knowledge base over time. I introduce David Layton's list of values as a potentially powerful tool for structuring lessons around technical, economic, aesthetic, social, environmental, moral and spiritual dimensions of objects. However, I argue that such frameworks are only effective if students have the requisite understanding of materials, processes, and terminology to engage in meaningful analysis.
As I grapple with the complexity of teaching design and technology, I emphasize the importance of spiraling knowledge development and providing opportunities for students to practice applying their understanding to decode the implicit and explicit values embedded in designed objects.
Ultimately, I position the ability to critically examine object agency and values as a crucial aspect of design and technology education. I challenge teachers to move beyond superficial engagement with frameworks and to instead focus on equipping students with the rich knowledge and language needed to participate successfully in a complex designed world. My insights highlight the thought and care required to effectively support students in navigating an increasingly technological landscape.
(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)
Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?
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Alison Hardy:
This was a really challenging conversation this week that was published on Tuesday, the one I had with Alice about agency. I mean, we had good fun in that conversation but it was also, you know, really made me think about objects and my relationship with objects, and you can hear that I talk about some different examples about, for example, the rucksack and such, and it got me into thinking about, well, how does this relate to design and technology practice and how do we teach this to children? I think Alice is doing some really interesting work around this and I'm hoping we do do a follow-up episode with a teacher to talk about this. But it got me into thinking about, you know, what can we teach children about agency? And I started to reflect on the podcast that I did quite a long time ago now with James Bleach and I forgot who else I did it with. But anyway, I'll put a link in the show notes about empathy, about design empathy, and interestingly, it's been one of the most downloaded episodes from the podcast, so it's obviously hit. You know resonates with people.
Alison Hardy:
But I do think to say we're going to teach empathy is kind of nigh on impossible really. I think it's a bit like some of these other things that we say are transferable, like problem solving, teamwork. These things are developed because of the Bank of knowledge and experiences that we have and so we become more attuned to things. And I think that's the same when we start thinking about teaching children about, you know, design agency is. I don't think it can be a lesson objective. Today you're going to learn how to be more empathetic, or today you're going to learn how to be, to have more agency, about how objects have agency or how such and such. I think it has to be done in the context of an object. But as a teacher, you could have a framework for, you know, for planning the structure of a lesson around this, and I think it is, you know it is. It is quite a skill thing for a teacher to do, because I was reflecting on the fact that I'd done an activity with some of our student teachers quite a long time ago where I emptied my bag I talk about this in Tuesday's episode emptied my bag and was able to articulate why those different things in my bag and what they meant to me and why they were there and why I kind of let them take up the space or they took up the space.
Alison Hardy:
I think that's the other thing, isn't it? I think that Alice sort of talks about is that it's not just us that have agency, but objects, you know, take on a life of their own in some ways. It's not to give them anthropometric life, but it kind of just starts to realise that we have an interaction with things and things can influence us as well as us influencing things. So it got me to wondering about how how would we do this, and I and we talk about it on Tuesday about the place of values, and towards the end, I talk about the fact that you know values were such a key part of the national curriculum in England for design and technology when the subject first started. You know, using different strategies as a teacher and frameworks like the PI's approach the physical, intellectual, emotional and social needs in relationship to a contact.
Alison Hardy:
But I'd also use much of David Layton's work around values that I think hasn't really been bettered and it is only a framework that I think teachers could use when helping children to think about the implicit values that are sort of hidden within an object. I don't know if I'm kind of making any sense here. I know I know what I'm trying to say and while I'm talking, I'm opening up a document that I've written that has got these things in, and I'll put some links in the show notes as well about this, about value judgments, I think. I think it's something that we just kind of take for granted a little bit now when we're teaching well, I mean, I don't teach anymore, but you know, when I hear about it I don't hear values talked about, and I think David Layton's work is a really useful framework that teachers could use to give us prompts to explore objects. And so David's framework has a number of different values. So he talks about technical, economic, aesthetic, social, environmental, moral and spiritual, stroke religious, which is some of the things that Alice and I talk about as well.
Alison Hardy:
And I think by not having this language as a teacher, then we become focused on the uncertain aspects of a product a product, not a project, a product when we're asking children to explore it. And you know I do have issues with things like access FM, because I think if we're not careful we're quite superficial with them. I think we think we're teaching access FM whereas in actual that is fact as a framework to help children be prompted to explore some deeper elements about an object. And it's the same with this values framework is. It's there as a prompt to help children explore an object, but they have to have knowledge to be able to explore that object. And what I mean by that knowledge? I can come in in many different ways. So if a teacher is going to use this values framework, it's for the teacher to think about how can I, what do children need to know to be able to explore, for example, the technical values of an object?
Alison Hardy:
And so the examples that come from Leighton is that technical is about, for example, the right material for the job, that it improves performance of either a process, the person, a life, okay, the improved performance of an artifact. And if we're developing what? If I'm doing something, is I'm making it better? And is it a neat solution as in that you know it's efficient, it works well, but to be able to make those decisions, you know, is it the right material for the job?
Alison Hardy:
Children need to have an understanding and know about different types of materials and their properties. We can't just say to them let's explore the technical values of this object without them actually having that database of knowledge to draw on about properties of materials If we're saying it's an improved performance, they need to have some language to be able to say why something is better or worse and think language like efficient is one of them, and then we have to pick what we mean by efficient. What do you mean by the improved performance of an artifact? What do you mean by making people's lives easier? We have to teach children the language to be able to articulate that. So what I'm saying here is the values framework from Leighton. I think it's really powerful and useful, but it is just a framework because behind that, to be able to use it, teachers need to have thought about what the children know or need to know to be able to explore the values excuse me, implicit and explicit within an object.
Alison Hardy:
You know, a few weeks ago I had a conversation that's on the podcast with Joanne Taylor when we were talking about AI and using AI prompts and text to generate images, and I identified that you know these things are really powerful and what the visual image is far superior to what many of us can ever hope to draw. But the creativity of those objects is only going to be as good as the prompt that is given by the child to AI and that involves language and children need to learn language to be able to write decent prompts. And it's the same thing here. If we're going to explore the values, the agency of an object and our interaction with it, we need to teach them the knowledge that they can then draw on themselves to make judgments, to evaluate, you know, the agency of a product. So, going back to me in my bag and all the stuff that was in my bag part of the way, the reason I can do that is because I have explored values in objects over time, particularly as my own personal knowledge and experience database has grown.
Alison Hardy:
So we can't expect children to do this really well If, first of all, we haven't given them an opportunity to learn how others have done that and those debates to also articulate that for themselves and give them language to be able to do that. So I think this is really quite complex. You know that conversation that myself and Atlas had last week was far ranging. We explored a huge amount of things and it was a difficult conversation. But we're adults who have been embedded, involved in design education for a long time. We can't expect children to do that and I think it's very easy as experienced practitioners like school teachers, like me and Atlas, like other researchers, to forget the journey we've been on in terms of building up our own knowledge database. That then means that we have a different type of insight into the agency of objects and therefore how values appear or don't appear or are hidden within an object. So I think that's something to think about is, if you're a teacher and you're wanting to have these sorts of conversations or to encourage children to do this and I think this is the second aim of the national curriculum in England is actually around helping children explore for themselves that interaction, the implications, the impact of design and technology or technological products, honours then they need to be taught stuff, and we need to do that in a very structured way.
Alison Hardy:
And when I say taught stuff, I'm not talking about didactic teaching, I'm not talking about declarative knowledge. I'm talking about teachers very carefully selecting what objects they're going to bring into the classroom and how they're going to help children structure that conversation around that object. Are they learning new words? Are they learning new knowledge about materials, about processes, those different aspects about values that they're going to talk about? They're going to focus on a particular aspect Me myself and Alice talked about, for example, equality and disadvantaged, and how that was embedded in different artefacts. How do we bring that out in a lesson in a structured way? So we're developing the children's toolbox database to be able to then look at other objects and expand on that.
Alison Hardy:
Having a framework like a list of values, like access, fm, is insufficient If there is no depth of knowledge or growing depth of knowledge. You know a year one child compared to you know a five year old compared to an 11 year old, compared to a 14 year old. They should have a different depth of knowledge and it should be growing and you can't see. But I'm kind of making a circle and a spiral here, because I think these things need to be revisited over time and practiced as their knowledge grows. So I think this thing about children being able to articulate and understand what's happening in the designed and technological world is really important.
Alison Hardy:
That a framework is a tool, but without the ability to articulate the language and the knowledge to support that, it stays at a very flat level, which I think frameworks are in danger of doing unless teachers think very carefully about what are we teaching, what are the pupils learning, how are they going to draw on that and how does it lead towards that end goal, which is in the National Curriculum for Design and Technology in England, which says that they will develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in the increasingly technological world? And I'm interpreting that here to mean that they can engage with a designed object, an artefact, in such a way that they recognise their own values that are implicit and also maybe within the object and also maybe why they reject that object. That then, as they mature and they start to engage in the democracy that we're part of, that they start to be able to understand why some things they want to reject and some things they want to accept, some things sit comfortably and some things don't when they're looking around at the technological world around them. So there we go rather complex, lots of bits and pieces in there, but I think this is complex and I think what teachers do in teaching children to do this. It is complex and involves a lot of decisions and I think we need to remember that things like AccessFM, latentslist of Values are a framework. They aren't the end goal, and we need to teach children things to enable them to use that framework in a more meaningful way where they can understand and engage with the designed world and understand the implicit and explicit values within that designed world.
Alison Hardy:
I think I've got there in the end. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed that. I've enjoyed having the conversation with myself here, hoping you're hearing that I'm exploring this as well. I think it is complex. I think much of the teaching we do in design and technology is complex and I'm hoping that if you're a teacher listening this has been helpful and if it hasn't, or if it has, then you'll get in touch and let me know what you think and maybe come on the podcast and have a three way conversation with myself and Alice.