Yet again I'm talking about a book I've edited! This time I'm inviting you to join the debates - which chapters do you want to hear more about? Take a look at the contents page and let me know.
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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.
If you like the podcast, you can always buy me a coffee to say 'thanks!'
Please offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by connecting with me on Threads @hardy_alison or by emailing me.
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If you want to support me by becoming a Patron click here.
If you are not able to support me financially, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!
Alison Hardy:
I might have mentioned it in a recent podcast or in the last couple of months that I've submitted the manuscript for the debates in design and technology, second edition book. That was a big cheer back in March for me and all my contributors. So thanks very much to them. It's been great fun working with different group of people, some of this, some of the same from the learn to teach book. But you know, some some new people, people that I have not met before. And so that's been really exciting that those 16 chapters, and now when, and some of those chapters are kind of controversial topics. And hopefully, when people get hold of the book, which should be out later in the year, I'm still waiting to hear from Routledge about when that will be, but it will, it will cause some debates, and people might disagree with the opinions that the contributors make. In the book. I've shared if you sign up for my newsletter at a link to the abstracts for the book. But I'll put in the show notes for this episode, a link to the table of contents so you can see all the headings and who the authors are for the different chapters. And it's been good fun to put it together, I've I've written to a challenge that I had from Rose Sinclair about looking at the diversity of the authors and making the chapters more inclusive. So this time, there are more international authors from an additional one, you know, things have moved and changed since edition, one that was done by Gwyneth Owen Jackson, and which I had the privilege of being part of that book. And it was great to work with Gwyneth and learn from that experience of being edited by a fantastic editor such as Gwyneth. But that book was published quite a few years ago now. And so in the second edition, things have shifted, particularly, as I say, in terms of the diversity of the contributors. So I've had the honour to work with Mishack Gumbo, who's from South Africa. And he's written a chapter about teaching for technological justice, embracing indigenous designs. And some of you may have picked up on the article that I've done for the design and technology associations practice magazine in England, about how do we do race in D and T and reading that chapter that Mishack wrote has really challenged my thinking. And so I would encourage people, when they get the book, to engage with that one, they may well kind of think, well, what's what's in this for me? Well, that's a really easy position that we could take, particularly if we're white, but actually, Mishack's perspective, is beautifully written, beautifully presented, but challenges of view of what technological knowledge actually looks like. And so from that, that also leads to the how do we do race in D&T chapter worked with loads of people on that, and some people might not agree with some of the issues and the things that we've raised in that chapter? And how do we do race Indian tea, and it's not as simple as representation? There's a number of different ways we can do this. And and how do we do that? And should we do that? And so this leads us on to thinking about some of the more challenging chapters in the book. So one from David Spendlove, about why did design and technology fail, and one from Matt McLain, which is almost the counterpart of this, but what's so special about design and technology anyway, although David doesn't claim that D&T isn't special, he's just presenting some different views about why the subject has failed, we might want to disagree with what we mean by failed. And I know there's an awful lot of work happening in England at the moment to challenge some of the position that design and technology has found it safe itself in to kind of work on justifying why design and technology is an important subject. As part of a general education for all children. I think that's where Matt's chapter comes in. And so the reason I'm talking about these chapters is because Well, for two reasons is one, I'm starting to think ahead about the book coming out. So yeah, the usual self promotion here about about getting the book out. And let's be clear, I'm not going to get rich on the royalties from any of these books that we're publishing. But it's just to say that it is good to get these books out and to get good to get these different viewpoints out. But actually, how does it How does the debate happen beyond the book? You know, people will read these now I know they're on reading lists in universities. I was very excited to see when I went to the University of Limerick last week, to work with colleagues there that the debates in design and technology book was on the reading list and on the bookshelf of colleagues that I worked with there. So that made me feel great. So when I go back next year, I'll make sure I take some of the second edition, but that's that's one place for it to be in kind of it's natural that when you're studying to become a designer technologists teach you read and there is A myth among some publishers, not Routledge, the mainstream ones that design and technology teachers don't read. I've heard that has been said to some authors. I don't think that's true. I mean, I certainly have it as normal in our culture. I won't mention any of my colleagues in the University of Limerick, who told me they don't read any fiction books. But it's one thing to read a chapter in a book that presents potentially a different view to you about an aspect of design and technology. But who do you talk to that about, and as I said, if you're in university or on a teacher training course, and it's on the reading list, and it's kind of kind of a natural thing to be doing, you need to do that to have that critical thinking. But where does that happen outside is great with them, Claire Vickery's D&T book club that she started in England. And I know that that's had a very positive response from many D&T teachers. But also it's it's thinking, you know, wider than that, and as building on the work of people like Claire, how do we kind of keep these debates going. So one of the things that I'm proposing to do with the book is to ask some of the contributors to join me and others in a live debate about the topics in their chapter. So I'm thinking about which chapters that might be. So that's why I've put the table of contents in the reading in reading list, can see I'm planning for next academic year at the University, planning on reading this. But if I put it in the show notes, or take a look at that, and I'd be really interested to hear via social media, or an email about which chapter you would want to be involved in a debating, and we'd want to hear it debating, what I'm thinking of playing around with is myself, the contributors, and maybe somebody with a different view, as hosting a live debate, recording it for a podcast, and that people could be in the audience and chip in questions and contribute to that debate. But I want to know which debates from the book you'd be most interested in hearing about? So have a look at the table of contents? And let me vote no, via social media. So that's, that's the main reason that this week's podcast is to talk about that is to actually engage that conversation is to ask you, what are you interested in hearing about? And would you be interested in reading a chapter ahead of time to take part in those debates? And and that's kind of get these conversations going? Because I think there are some controversial questions that we do need to explore. Some of them are in this book. And as I say, in the conclusion to the book, these aren't all of the debates by any stretch. In fact, I had lunch with Eddie Norman last week. And for those of you who listen regularly to the podcast, you say, and what's new Allison I was I do reasonably regularly meet Eddie for lunch or drink and even during the lockdown, we did manage our Bally's in the run up to Christmas over teams. But anyway, we had a meet had a meet up last week. It was really great to do that. We did that in Uppingham chatted over lunch, and chatted over what some of the questions are that we need to debate around the subject. And as I said, some of them are in this book. But there are there are more. And actually just over lunch, I'm just looking at my notes. We came up with 21 controversial questions that we need to debate about design and technology. And I'm going to put a podcast in a couple of weeks out out in a couple of weeks about these different questions and asking you to then think about what other controversial questions do we need to talk about Indian tea? So there's two things for you to think about is number one, in the new debates book, which chapters do you want to be involved in a debate with or hear a debate about? And secondly, what are the questions that we still need to debate and talk about in design and technology to reach some consensus? What are the what are the big issues that we need to get out there? So that's just some food for thought for you getting involved in a conversation. And let's ask some difficult questions to kind of move, move the subject forward, as it should be because it does what it says on the tin. It's about design and technology. So let's apply some of our design really thinking and take some of our design approach to resolving some of these questions and exploring some of these questions about what makes design and technology the subject that it is. So as usual, thanks ever so much for listening. You can find me in all the usual places on social media, either as Alison Hardy or Hardy underscore, Alison, you can find me find my website Dr. Alison hardy.com. If you like listen to the podcast, please do think about leaving a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast from because that does help people find the podcast and also if you want to just leave me a message about the podcast then please do leave Use this SpeakPipe function that's on the show notes where you can actually leave me a voicemail message and I might play that out in a future episode thanks for taking the time to listen what are the debates what do we need to talk about and do you want to be involved in those debates that's my challenge for you this week