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
TD&T041 Does substantive and disciplinary knowledge work for D&T?
Defining or categorising D&T knowledge makes my brain hurt. This week Liam Anderson and I take about whether Christine Counsell's categories of substantive and disciplinary knowledge work for D&T.
Mentioned in this episode:
Let's talk about knowledge in D&T - event on 12th August
Christine Counsell’s definitions of substantive and disciplinary knowledge:
'Substantive knowledge is the content that teachers teach as established fact – whether common convention, concept or warranted account of reality.'
'Disciplinary knowledge, by contrast, is a curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists or professional practice. It is that part of the subject where pupils understand each discipline as a tradition of enquiry with its own distinctive pursuit of truth.’
Quoted from: Counsell, C. 2018. Taking curriculum seriously. Impact Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching.
Marc de Vries’ book ‘Teaching about Technology: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology for Non-philosophers’ (ridiculously expensive!)
I mention Rittel and Weber - but I may have the wrong source!
A knowledge-led curriculum: pitfalls and possibilities- Michael Young
Other related podcast episodes:
TD&T11: Diving into the curriculum and D&T capability
TD&T15: Do designers actually know anything?
TD&T22 What designers know and how they know it
TD&T28 Eddie and Alison talking about D&T and epistemology
TD&T31 Are there different ways of knowing?
TD&T34 Kurt Seemann on classifying and organising D&T knowledge (Part 2)
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This is the Talking D&T Podcast, episode 41. Welcome to the Talking D&T Podcast with me, alison Hardy, a podcast for anybody interested in design and technology education, where I'll be sharing news, views, ideas and opinions about D&T. This week's episode is a recording of a conversation I had with liam anderson back in may. Liam contacted me and said could we have a chat about knowledge in design and technology and particularly around substantive and disciplinary knowledge, which some of you may have come across if you've been looking at christine council's work? So I said, yep, let's have a conversation. And I said but can we record the conversation so I could put it out as a podcast, which Liam agreed to? So this is completely unedited and you can hear that I'm exploring, that I'm questioning even some of the things that I'm saying whilst I'm saying it. So I suppose I put this in as a health warning at the beginning of this week's podcast. To say in as a health warning at the beginning of this week's podcast to say don't take what I'm saying or what Liam's saying as the definitive version of substantive and disciplinary knowledge and how it fits to design and technology or how we categorize it, or even if this way I talk about disciplinary knowledge in design and technology is the way that we talk about epistemology in the subject and what form knowledge takes in design and technology. All of my podcast episodes come with the health warning that they are news, views, ideas, opinions and they are in a particularly current, evolving state. If you want to see more definitive things about how I think and my views about different aspects of my research, then you have to read what I write, because it's when I write that I have more space to develop my thinking and be more critical of myself and edit it and give it to other people to review before I publish. So that's my health warning for this week's episode. Do listen right the way to the end. It is one of the longer episodes that I'm publishing because towards the end we have a bit of a discussion about what that might mean for what we teach in the subject, and also bear in mind that this is a conversation between two people who've known each other a long time. Liam was my student on the undergraduate design and technology education course a few years back. You can hear at times me still continue to express my frustration with Liam as a student. So we have quite a laugh, but it's quite an honest conversation and I hope you enjoy it and I hope it gives you food for thought.
Speaker 1:The way we talk about knowledge here might be for you. There are other ways. If you've been listening to Court Seaman's podcasts that I put out a few weeks ago, you'll have heard a different way of talking about knowledge. If you listen to Eddie's, that's another way of talking about knowledge and just last week I had a conversation with Eddie about design epistemology and my thinking shifted again. So I'm not convinced that what I talked about in the podcast is how I think and believe and feel today about design epistemology and what is knowledge in the world of design as well as in the world of design and technology. But I really think it's good to have these healthy debates. That that's why I chose to publish this, so that, even though two months on I'm not sure I completely agree with what I was saying, I think it's useful to publish this so you can hear and recognise that it's okay to debate and question and that we don't have to be fixed in our perspectives.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know you've done some podcasts on this before, but actually looking on the internet internet there wasn't actually much else out there, particularly for dnt, on what substantive and disciplinary knowledge might look like. I think, particularly for me as head of department looking at curriculum planning and then maybe working my team on that um, I find it quite difficult to to define what those, what those two areas are. Um, but it kind of came from. I was watching or listening to, rather, john Hutchinson's podcast that he did for research ads on seven distinctions every subject leader should know and it kind of started from that. He talked about the importance about subject leaders and knowing the difference between these, these two terms, substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge, and how that might be or how it might look in in your subjects area.
Speaker 1:But, um, yeah, for dnt, I think that that, um, there isn't an awful lot out there and I think, particularly if you're curriculum planning or doing it as a, as a head department looking at these areas, um, it can be quite a difficult area to kind of get your your head around really yeah, and I I think they are difficult and I don't think it's something that is taught a lot about in design and technology, which is part of the reason why me and Eddie were doing those series of podcasts about what is knowledge in design education, to try and give design and technology teachers, the community, something to kind of get them thinking.
Speaker 1:And there are lots of different ways of looking at knowledge, and one of the ways that is coming to the fore talking about curriculum design at the moment seems to be this idea about substantive and disciplinary knowledge, and if you want to read, I think somebody who's a real authority on it is christine counsel, you know she's. She's a person who got me into thinking about it when I attended a british curriculum forum event in london a few years back and she talked about a number of questions that she felt that um, school leaders needed to be able to ask and that their middle leaders needed to be able to answer about their subject, the curriculum design of their subject. And I suppose with the and that's influenced, I think and this is my take on it ofstead's increased focus on curriculum design. And so you're absolutely right, I think, to be having those sorts of conversations with your head and going around and and looking around at it.
Speaker 1:My proviso would always be that you need to be clear about what you understand to be knowledge, and that just that word knowledge is so loaded and this is where I get on my high horse, one of my many high horses in design and technology. When I hear about theory lessons in D&T, you know that's always been one of my bugbears. It's because there's an implication that there's a separation between theory and practice in design and technology practice in design technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you look at the work of richard kimball and k stables, that hand and mind, that back and forth idea. Now I have some problems with that because that potentially implies that there's a separation between hand and mind. So theory in the mind and hand in the practice. That's not how they talk about. They talk about design and iterative and and that back and forth, whereas another way of looking at it is the way we learn in design technology, the way children learn. I'm not going to go into learning theories. That's opening.
Speaker 1:A whole other can of worms is around embodied learning. And then it starts to get us to think about how do we? Then it starts to get us to think about how do we know things in design and technology and what is it that we need to know? And then it comes back to. Then, for me, the idea about it's about design and technology capability, which I think is something that has been quite sidelined or lost or forgotten about when we talk about design and technology. So I think we have to get the idea about what is the subject about, and one of the things for me that it's about is developing children's design and technology capability. And if we start to think about. What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Looking around quickly, for my third edition of the learning to teach design and technology book I have to get a name, check in on that. The fourth edition will be out in september, edited by me, um, and if you go on to the show notes for this, for this podcast, you'll find a 20 discount. Uh, anyway, there we go, that little plug over and done with um. I believe you've got a chapter in that book, haven't you, liam?
Speaker 3:yes, yeah, yeah there you go.
Speaker 1:So design and technology capability um is, this is how gwyneth puts it in the third edition is concerned with the active, purposeful application of knowledge and skills, the movement of thought into action and the simultaneous use of both thought and action. Okay, I think that's really powerful, because then we start to understand this interaction between disciplinary knowledge and substantive knowledge in design and technology. So I'm hoping I'm making some sense there.
Speaker 1:I've kind of gone off a little bit, because I think we have to understand that that's what the subject is about is developing design and technology capability before we can start to understand. So what are these two aspects, substantive and disciplinary, in design and technology? Now, I don't have the full answers for this um, and it's really great. I was really delighted when you contacted me and said oh you know, could you have five minutes of my time? I did laugh when I thought five minutes talk about this. Um because because it is something that we've been talking about with our student teachers and I've started to explore in the podcast and me and eddie are talking about it um, because you have to have an understanding of the structure of the curriculum and design and technology and how it layers up to be able to plan it. Otherwise, it is just a series of bolted together projects that don't actually develop dnt capability over time. You know they're just like another knick-knack.
Speaker 1:I won't say I won't say the rest of that phrase, and they're another knick-knack and another knick-knack and another knick-knack. And you think, but are they developing their design and technology capability? You know so, so, so, yeah, so that helps us think about these two parts. So, if I go back to what substantive and disciplinary is, and I'm going to use Christine Council's terminology on this. So Christine Council talks about substantive knowledge. Is the content that teachers teach as established fact substantive?
Speaker 1:knowledge is the content that teachers teach as established fact, whether common convention, concept or warranted account of reality. Okay, so that's substantive and that's what some dnt teachers might talk about as being theory theory. But if we're not careful, the theory then gets drilled down to. This is a pin hammer, this is a ball and pain hammer, do you know? I mean, it becomes down to that level. This is a tenon saw, this is a hacksaw, you know, it becomes down to that level, whereas it's actually more than that. If we think about design and technology capability as being this purposeful application of knowledge and skills and this simultaneous use, does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So if we have, this separation all the time, then where are we developing that? So, when I think, when we talk about substantive knowledge in design and technology, it is than naming a tool, naming a material, naming a process, describing a process, and it is actually more than we use that process in this context, and that process in this context, I mean it's more than that because I really like the way that she talks about concepts or warranted accounts of reality.
Speaker 1:You know and you put a tweet out the other week, didn't you about you know what are the concepts in design and technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other conversation is talking about concepts and I think the work that David Barleks and Torben Stieg have done around the big ideas kind of is one framework, is one way of looking at those concepts, and what concepts do is when we introduce something new to a child and if they have a conceptual way of thinking about things, which we have to teach them in design and technology, they learn something new and they can attach it to that concept. So, for example, if we talk about wasting materials, so you could say that wasting materials is a concept, right, so wasting is about removing a material. Well, we remove materials across the board in design and technology. We remove excess material in textiles as we might shape something, or we put in, you know, we put in the, the shaping around, um.
Speaker 1:You know, my mind's gone completely blank now and I'm thinking you know, but we remove excess material, we do it in. And when we work with plastics, when we, you know, drill out a hole, we're removing the, the waste acrylic, for example, when we, you know, we drill through a piece of acrylic or um. When we use food, we remove excess, you know, and we waste um different bits. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:so yeah, yeah and if we then start to talk about the tools that we use to do that to waste then the children, I think, start to see, okay, so that's that's used to, to waste that material there, but we do a similar thing there. So they can't start to see the links and they can start to apply that understanding of wasting in one material or one project to another project. And that's kind of one of the things. So concepts are kind of like these big ideas. There's different ways of talking about concepts.
Speaker 1:Tim Oates talks about threshold concepts, that once you've got something, once you've gained an understanding of a concept, there's no going back. So if you think about a threshold on a door, you know once we cross the threshold we're into a new space and once you've got it you can't go back to seeing the way the world was before we crossed that, before we gained that. So we have to think about those things in design and technology, about what are we teaching children? That once they grasp that concept they can't see the world of design and technology in the same way again and actually because of the nature of our subject they almost can't see the world in the same way again because our subject is so much about responding to needs, wants, place, context and, you know, changing things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping that's sort of making sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, ticking over in my mind yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And this is my current thinking about this, you know, as I think more about it, I think my current thinking continues to change um and so think about concepts. If you want to go and have a look at you, may well have on your shelf mark devries's book the philosophy of technology for the teacher. Remember we did that in year two, but you didn't get a copy.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. Of course you didn't buy a copy.
Speaker 1:I can't believe I even thought that comment so Mark DeVries in his book and it is quite an expensive book, so I was looking at the second edition just recently. So if you get hold of the first edition it might be cheaper. He talks about concept mapping.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:And as a teacher, I think people might find that useful to do concept mapping around things in design and technology and david and torben stuff might be quite a good place to start. If you start with some of those concepts, or the other place to start, I'm gonna ask you if you've got this book and this book was on the reading list as well liam but um, the design and technology textbook, the john the caborn cave book. You know that is um.
Speaker 2:I think I might have that in school on my bookshelf, possibly right it's like a 1986 yeah, yeah well.
Speaker 1:They organize some of their chapters, I think, around concepts to do with working with resistant materials, and I think some of those concepts are suitable for all materials in design and technology. Me and Sarah talked about them when we and her used to have conversations around the similarities and differences between working with textiles and wood and metal and plastic and so on and so forth. Um, and we found those big headings, those chapter headings or section headings, quite interesting from that book, but I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Um, whether people can still get hold of a copy. I think they're quite cheap if you buy them second hand. So that's substantive knowledge.
Speaker 1:And if you listen back to podcast 14, when I talk about draft angles, um, I talk there about that as a form of warranted account of reality. Um, because I think there's some things that we teach in design and technology to, for example, year seven, like, for example, when you're vacuum forming you need a draft angle. But as we develop their understanding of using vacuum forming and moulds, they start to realise, ah, you don't need a draft angle all the time when moulding or creating moulds. So at one point that was what I mean it's about. It's a warranted account of reality. So when you teach it, for example, to year year sevens, you're justified in telling them that as a fact. But as they progress through, you show them that it's. It's a truth in certain situations and I think that's a real skill in design and technology.
Speaker 1:We start to think about some things that we teach as theory are actually only truths in certain contexts and there's a podcast, um, that I've recorded, that I'm editing from court seaman and he talks about some of these sorts of things that, for example, it's a truth that I could use a junior hacksaw to cut wood, metal and plastic OK, whether it's the most appropriate tool to use on all of those materials.
Speaker 1:We have to teach children to have that reasoning so they can make those decisions OK, and partly to do that, we draw on scientific knowledge about the structure of materials and the hardness of the saw and the nature of the teeth on the saw and so on and so forth. So it's not just a straightforward to say and we're going to use a junior hacksaw, we have to. Behind that, as teachers, I think, have a thinking about how much of that is a truth or a fact yeah, yeah am I making sense there?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think so, yeah, I'm sure I'm sure I'm not making this any easier, because this is hard, do you know? I mean, I think it is really hard and I think we have to have these conversations to help us think about the rigor of our curriculum absolutely, yeah, yeah, definitely okay, so that's substantive, and I think in dnt, we get very hung up on that substantive knowledge.
Speaker 1:This is my view. I may get some flack for that statement, but then, when we start to talk about the disciplinary knowledge, this is where I think it becomes more challenging, and this is one of the reasons that back in 2010, 2011, we were challenged as a subject that shouldn't be part of the core curriculum, because it wasn't clear about the structure and the nature of our disciplinary knowledge. And again, this is part of the conversations that me and eddie are having. The conversations I've had with court seaman in australia um, I mean conversations with you, for example, with students is to think about. So how, having the conversations I've had with Court Seaman in Australia I mean conversations with you, for example, and with students is to think about.
Speaker 1:So how do we know what we know? How is knowledge established and structured within design and technology? So, right, I've taken a breath there because I've exhausted myself on substantive knowledge and now I'm going to go back to what christine council says. It's about disciplinary knowledge. So if you thought substantive was hard, take, take a breath. Disciplinary knowledge takes us to a different level. I think she says that disciplinary knowledge is a curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists or professional practice. It is that part of the subject where pupils understand each discipline as a tradition of inquiry with its own distinctive pursuit of truth. Okay, okay, so. So can you see why? When you said can I have five minutes of your time, I laughed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm not sure I'm going to give a clear answer and this is something that Eddie and I are working on this, and we're working on a project about this. We're currently designing a book, an interactive book that we hopefully will have multiple authors from people like yourself who will come in and give their ideas about disciplinary knowledge and how we know what we know in the subject. So one of the things that I think is within designer technology is you know, how do we know something that's a good or a poor design? You know how do we know that? Because designer technology isn't like science where we take away the variables and we test one thing to see if that thing works, because we design within a context and and court talks about this in in his podcast we have loads and loads of variables, and so what we're doing when we do design whether it's the children in our lessons doing design, professionals doing design, scholars doing design in the field of design we we are working with multiple variables different sizes of people, environmental issues, availability of materials, limitations of the team and the expertise of the team, the processes available to design, what the technology, in terms of 3D printing, for example, can produce. At that time. We have all of these variables that we have to manage.
Speaker 1:And Eddie introduced me to some work by Rittel and Weber where they talk about that when we or whoever has done a design, it's a resolution, not a solution. Okay, so I think that takes it into the substantive, is that sorry? Into the disciplinary rather. So even I'm getting confused here. Even I, um, is a good design, is a resolution at that moment? And so we have to teach children to understand about that complexity of good or poor design and how we make those judgments. And so some of the resolution that has either been designed and or made, you know, prototyped or whatever. So that's my current thinking.
Speaker 1:Talk to me tomorrow might be different, okay yeah, yeah, because I'm still trying to work this, work this out, but I think that's something that we really have to get our head around is that we are about resolution, compromise and children understanding that, um, and how we help them understand that and how we make help them make decisions. Because I wrote an article quite a long time back for teach design, when that was going about five arguments for design and technology, and one of the arguments is about culture and that we that design and technology good design technology gives children a cultural appreciation. That design and technology good design technology gives children a cultural appreciation of design and our interaction with products and the way technology affects how we work and how we live and you know how we function. And so not only in design and technology do children have the opportunity to design and resolve, but they also have an opportunity to culturally appreciate things around them, and that is part of, to me, the disciplinary knowledge. But if I go back to the idea about pursuit of truth and how we understand the claims that are made in design and technology, this is good design, bad design. Well made, that we've solved the problem.
Speaker 1:I think we have to think about resolution and compromise and we draw on the substantive knowledge. And that substantive knowledge I'm going to go backtrack a bit here, back to substantive knowledge, oh dear can be about materials, processes, but I think it can also be about understanding other people. I know some people raise the idea that a concept is around empathy. I'm not quite sure it is a concept, but I think it is part of our substantive knowledge around understanding others and other contexts. So that when what we do, when we do what we do in design technology, about designing and making and coming up with resolutions, that we are optimising for a function Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:We're going to get to an optimal position based on that context, and that context will be affected by lots of different things, so I'm going to stop and take a breath there yeah I um, yeah, I think, yeah, put even more questions and thoughts into my mind.
Speaker 2:So I think my initial thinking when I emailed you, I think, was probably to simplify things, so I had going back to what you were saying earlier about. Often it's just, um, we think about the, the definition of established facts, the standard knowledge. Often, um, we think about MD&T as perhaps the really simplified idea of that, as being names of tools, and that's why, initially, my initial thinking was, or maybe, understanding what functional aesthetics or those, those terms or that information is, and then disciplinary knowledge. I was thinking more to do with how design works, so understanding, perhaps, methods that designers might use to understand users or identify needs or ways that they might generate ideas, needs or ways that they might, um, generate ideas. So thinking about how design actually works, as opposed to the definitive um information, definitive facts about things maybe like materials and processes, um, that then might be used within that design process whereas I think they belong more in the substantive knowledge yeah, yeah, does that make sense?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah so, for example, teaching children, the 635 technique of generating and developing design ideas is a substantive knowledge, because it's a technique, it's not a way of knowing a truth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And the truth in design and technology. And I put the caveat again, this is my current way of thinking is around the function resolution that the design has yeah, yeah, I'm not sure I've said that very well, I'm trying to use all the terminology you know, but the substantive knowledge is around the design and technology capability. Going back to where?
Speaker 3:I started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting because I wouldn't necessarily think of that as established facts, that, um, a designer would necessarily use this particular method to design. But it's one way in which a designer might use to generate or develop design ideas, but it's not necessarily an established way of working in design necessarily so.
Speaker 1:I think no, no, no. I think you've raised some really interesting points there, so I'm going to take you back to it's not an established fact because it's not a way a designer thinks works right now. So first of all, I'm sat here thinking. That immediately says to me your value of design and technology is around children moving into that field of design career-wise.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to leave you with that one, okay yeah but the other thing is that Christine Council talks about it's about it's revised by scholars, artists or professional practice. So you're saying the professional practice of a designer, they that strategy of 635 because it's around teamwork and building on the work of others that designers do use that around teamwork. But we also know that people, scholars, within design, have developed strategies based on ideas around psychology, around creativity does that make sense yeah, yeah so that's where.
Speaker 1:And. And then the other element is you use the word fact, so it's a very crude simplistic, and I know you, so I can use that language towards you yeah, yeah, yeah normally I'm much more tactful than that. Um way of talking about substantive knowledge. Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah you're.
Speaker 1:You're limiting knowledge to being multiple choice almost you know a right or wrong, a regurgitation of fact, pub quiz, which is not what substantive knowledge is. It's an element of it, but it's not it yeah yeah, I think, I think I'm still trying to get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, um, I've got even more things sticking over in my head now, yeah, so yeah, okay, I don't know, I'm still confused. So, when we go back to the idea about facts, so if we think about um, disciplinary um, and I've lost my train of thought now, um, yeah, I think so there's a.
Speaker 1:There's a lot there, yeah I mean that I've I've kind of covered and I've brought in I've brought in lots of things and what I'll do is I will, I will put in, I'll email it to you, but it will also go into the show notes.
Speaker 3:Christine.
Speaker 1:Council's definitions of those yeah, yeah okay, and and I've also, so that will give you something to kind of anchor on and go back to um there's other things that you can read around about this. So michael young talks about knowledge rich as well and I've kind of read quite a bit of his work that influences um and shapes these ideas. So have a look at those, have a listen to what I've, what we've talked about, because we have.
Speaker 1:I have covered a huge amount yeah, yeah, yeah um, and I kind of let it settle and ferment do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:and play around with it, and then we yeah, yeah, come back and have another conversation.
Speaker 1:You know and and talk it through as I said yeah. I'm not. I'm not convinced I've got it completely right. It's kind of still work in progress in my head and, I think, having a listen to what Eddie's talked about in some of the podcasts where Eddie talks about design knowledge might help as well.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I think when Court Siemens 1 comes out and I think we're going to do that as two podcasts I think that will give you some clarity as well, because I had a conversation with him and he really helped me crystallise this disciplinary knowledge, which is about the epistemology how do we know what we know within design and technology? And as soon as we start to use big words, you know we start to switch off, but I think it is important to to think about that and some people disagree. You know, that's, that's fine. As I said, I'm exploring it, I'm trying to get my head around it, um, but there's loads of stuff out there you can read, but you kind of need some practical stuff yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been.
Speaker 2:It's been good um being able to, yes, talk through some, some ideas through and um get some different views. I think, like I said, yeah, particularly for dnt. You say, when I was looking around, there isn't a lot out there particularly for dnt about what these, these particular um areas are substantive and disciplinary in dnt, and I think, um, it's good sometimes to have just something to look at and find just kind of clarify your thinking when we're talking about those, the, the concepts and big ideas. And the work that david barlex has done I think was quite good in helping to clarify kind of my thinking around that and what that might be. And it's the same as when we teach things in the classroom. You know we give the students examples to help them kind of clarify that thinking about things. So, um, yeah, I think for dnt it'd be good to have kind of stuff out there a bit more um about, yeah, what these particular things are in dnt to kind of help um, teachers, curriculum leaders, kind of plans, uh, some of these things in their, in their curriculum.
Speaker 1:So it's quite a quite a um difficult thing to get your head around actually, I think, yeah, yeah yeah, it is, and and we're very project driven and we have to understand part of the reason we're project different is because that is our disciplinary knowledge that is where children have the opportunity to establish truth, because they are having to resolve a design context or a design problem or a situation and they are having to draw on the substantive knowledge that they have been taught and they may well realize they need some more substantive knowledge and you will realize as a classroom teacher ah, they need some more substantive knowledge.
Speaker 1:And you will realise as a classroom teacher ah, they need to understand about that. But because we don't always think about it and I put my hands up I didn't always think about this by any stretch of imagination when I was teaching. It means that we end up telling children the solution more than we need to, because we're not understanding the difference between substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge yeah, yeah, yeah I can. I can hear myself in a workshop.
Speaker 1:You know, I've given the children a project and we're doing this design project. When we're there and and they're all making you know that logistical nightmare 25 children in a workshop, all doing slightly different things, and it's just quicker and easier to go get, go to the cupboard, get the tool out and go. You use this. This is how you use it, get on with it rather than and sometimes that is absolutely the right thing to do because we have to do that in the immediacy of the moment but we haven't necessarily thought through what are those big ideas, the concepts, the substantive knowledge that we are explicitly building, introducing new in this project and also drawing on previous? Because that's one of christine's questions is what are they doing in this activity that they've drawn on from a previous activity they're building on?
Speaker 1:to then bring it together in this project, design project. I'm going to put the word design in there because that is the essence of our epistemology, or disciplinary knowledge that we've planned for. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah and that's what makes it complex. It makes your head explode yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, it's. Yeah, I absolutely agree it's good to think about, yeah, particularly, yeah, when you're um, you know, when we're normally in school and we're teaching, you're busy, you don't think about those things. There isn't that time to, and I think, um, actually now is. You know, there's lots of good things going on and it's been. I'd say, I can't start thinking about this from your podcast and john hutchinson's one, so, um, there's kind of a bit of time now where we can kind of reflect and look at some of those things.
Speaker 1:I think, um, and then I'm going to throw into the melting pot.
Speaker 2:This way of viewing knowledge as substantive and disciplinary is only one way of looking at knowledge there are other ways, just so I'd make it a little bit more complex for you well, I did actually interestingly um Paul Kearney, if I've said his name correctly there. Um posted something on Twitter um last week I think it was about um some stuff he'd done to do with art curriculum planning.
Speaker 1:He put on there about skills and procedural knowledge oh, paul Carney, yeah, yeah, he's in a previous podcast, yeah and then that kind of.
Speaker 2:I was thinking through all of that then, about then thinking about, yeah, the other types of knowledge then, but procedural knowledge and the difference between that and skills, yeah, yeah, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:And so Paul comes from an art background, so you know art has a different substantive and disciplinary knowledge, so you can't transpose that into design and technology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But what it does do. If you look at that, you start to think about, about.
Speaker 2:So what makes our?
Speaker 1:disciplinary knowledge in design and technology, different to art, different to science, different to geography, different to history and to other creative subjects. What makes it? What makes it different? And then, yeah, there is procedural knowledge, and then there's the knowing how and knowing that decorative, decorative knowledge. And then skills. What do we mean by a skill? How do we interpret and define a skill? You know well. Skills some people might argue so in substantive knowledge. And what do we mean by a skill?
Speaker 2:and let's not even open the can of worms about thinking skills, you know critical thinking yeah, it's not to think about there with uh substantive and disciplinary at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah but let's keep the conversation going. Liam, I'm happy to chat again yeah, that'd be really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tick over um some of this in my mind. I think I'll kind of go back um and have a look at some of this and maybe um start to define what I think some of these might be. And then, yeah, it'd be good talk again and get your view on my next stage of thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I might be wrong. I'm glad you laughed, as if to say, alison, you wrong, no.
Speaker 3:I might be.
Speaker 1:I might be, and also you know, christine, council comes from history. You, you know that's a subject and they have been thinking and talking about this for a long time. A long time and it is one way of thinking about it, but I think it is an important thing to think about because it has become quite current.
Speaker 1:So we have to think about how we respond about it. And if people listening to this think, well, that's not the way I want to think about how we respond about it. And if, if people listening to this think, well, that's not not the way I want to think about it, that's not not my truth about knowledge in design and technology, we have to because of these external pressures that are coming from ofsted and the way we are being included as a subject and excluded from different things. We have to be able to defend the position that we're taking as the alternative, then, yeah, yeah, absolutely if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So, and the other thing that I would challenge you to think about as I did when you were doing my student and as I do to my students, my master students, pg students is do not necessarily accept what people are saying to you. You don't have to agree yeah, yeah but you have to be able to come back and defend your position all right, yeah, yeah okay yeah all right great thanks, alison it's been really good to talk to you.
Speaker 2:It's got my brain thinking it's good for a monday morning yeah, um, yeah, I've got loads of things spinning around in my mind now. So, yeah, it's been good, it's been good. But, um, yeah, I'll, I'll kind of tick over this and, um, kind of have a look at it again and then, yeah, it'd be good to see what you think again, um, about what I've come up with. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to the Talking D&T Podcast with me, Alison Hardy.
Speaker 3:You can connect with me on Twitter at Hardy underscore Alison Show notes and transcripts for each podcast episode can be found on my website, alisonhardywork. Thanks for listening.
