TD&T084 Drawing to learn with Paul Carney

Paul Carney is back to talk about his new(ish) book Drawing to Learn. Like last time, we laughed, chatted and discussed some serious stuff.


Episode transcript

Links to Paul's work and the book can all be found at www.paulcarneyarts.com 

Twitter @paulcarneyarts 

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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. 

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:56

This week's episode is with a returning guest, Paul Kearney and Paul was one of the first guests on the podcast. And as I was sharing with him earlier, his episode is the third most downloaded episode that I've got from the 80 or so that I've now published. So it's great to have such a superstar for the talking DNC podcast. That just goes to your head. You are you are within the DNC world well, within the small world of my podcast, you're a superstar.

Paul Carney: 1:31

That will do me.

Alison Hardy: 1:33

Great. But it's lovely to have you back, Paul. And this time, we're going to talk about your second book that's come out. Drawing to learn anything, which I'm really excited about. I've got to put a photograph up somewhere that shows I have a personally signed.

Paul Carney: 1:50

Yes, you're one of the first people I kind of sent one too.

Alison Hardy: 1:54

Now. So I've really enjoyed it. I've done some of the activities and exercises within it. But anyway, before we go into that, Paul, do you just want to say hello, give a little bit of an introduction about who you are?

Paul Carney: 2:04

Hello? Yeah, I'm Paul Carney. I'm an art and design consultant based in Newcastle upon Tyne. I was a secondary teacher, head of department for about 14 years or something. I was an advanced skills teacher at secondary. I started doing a lot of work as primary transitions work and really loved it. So I'm moved to the primary sector, I actually moved to a middle school and loved it absolutely loved it. If I grab my time again, and go back to be a primary school teacher rather than a secondary teacher. Because second, because secondary children are often going through a lot of hormonal angst. And primary teachers, primary children are just so full of love and joy in the bring your stickers and cakes and things or a lot of the kind of positivity but all I left the classroom about 2015 and started doing consultancy and training work. And I set up my own training company with Susan calls called spaced. And yeah, I do a lot of work for big organisations such as access to big draw the the RSA, and things are going really well at the kind of moment it's just going from strength to strength, not enough hours in the day.

Alison Hardy: 3:31

No, we were talking about that work before you hit record about how we have to you have to manage some of the organisational stuff. Yeah, to have the space to do the creative things that we both really love.

Paul Carney: 3:42

Yeah. And I think it's down to that thing of where I think we own the VAT value. The people who do the, the more industrial side of things who do the mechanical side of things. It's like it's all very well and good being the kind of chat chat cherry on the top of a cake. But you need the cake, first of all, and if you don't have that you're getting nothing. And it's I think it's really important for design to kind of know that as well.

Alison Hardy: 4:13

Yeah, it's not just finished product, is it? It's stuff that's gone on before. I like that analogy. I can kind of go to town with that.

Paul Carney: 4:25

Okay, next week.

Alison Hardy: 4:27

I know you've taken me off into a whole realm. Thinking morning, can I justify getting that cake out? MID morning coffee. Anyway, let's get back to this. So you've got you've got this book out. It's out with our good friends left for design press. Yeah. And with Kathy Norman, now taking over the helm of that from her dad, Eddie. So that's been that's great that Cathy's involved. And you're working with Kathy. So tell us a little bit about this new book. It's not it's not new anymore. It it's been out for almost a year, hasn't it?

Paul Carney: 5:00

About six months now?

Alison Hardy: 5:01

Is it right? Okay.

Paul Carney: 5:02

I actually wrote it about two years ago. And originally it was just gonna be a PDF. It was just going to be a simple PDF that I was going to put onto my website. Because I'd heard a piece of research that really struck a chord with with me and the piece of research was done by some Canadian researchers called Fernandez one as and Mead. And they done a really big robust piece of research to measure what the most effective ways to remember things were mnemonic advice mnemonics systems, and they tested and compared different devices. And they found that The learning gains from droid were greater than any other mnemonic technique. And that included visualising included writing things down, it included a whole kind of range of different ways people remember, and yet kind of drawing was the most effective. And some notable notable researchers who, let's just say, kind of prominent influences on educational policy in in in England at the moment, wrote about it, and looked at it and said, yes, it's really good. This is brilliant. But it's doesn't have much place in the kind of classroom.

Alison Hardy: 6:45

How can I believe that response? Can you really

Paul Carney: 6:47

know? And I was, I was so annoyed about that. And it was right at the height of when there was a traditionalist thrust, if you like, from the kind of DFE it's when kind of art subjects were being slashed. It's when DF it's when DT saw subjects would decline in through the floor. And it was just an almost blanket refusal to accept that there was anything outside of their field of what they believe worked. And you still see this now this closed wall, there's like a wall isn't there around this notion of this works and everything that's got creativity attached to it is somehow superficial and trite and involves people you know, doing trivial playful things that have no meaning. And as a creative expert, this really makes my, my, it really makes my teeth grind. So anyway, I thought maybe it's because outside of the role of artists and designers, maybe people don't know how to use can draw in in any way other than as an artistic aesthetic thing. And um, as you know, my first book was drawing for coleg for cognition. And saw, I started putting together I looked at the research and started to think how could I elaborate it and expand it and strengthen it. And I developed a system that I called sad, which is syllable sound Association, draw drawing. And it's basically it uses different non mnemonic Tech Tech techniques, such as breaking words down into six syllables. It's, so it's breaking words down into the syllable sounds, and it's drawing. And it's true, and it's visualising it's using using jewel cording. And it's using spaced retrieval. So that what you do is you take a word, let's say you take the word or mean or as an amino acid, and you want to remember that word, you break it down into the three sounds of our mean nor, and you draw something to represent the sound of something to represent the sound of mean, and something to represent the sound of law. And then you draw the meaning of the word. And so in this way, what you do then is you, you're drawing it and you learn it, then you give yourself a few minutes, and then you try to remember it, then you give yourself another hour. And so you do like gradually spaced retrieval over time. And I started learning anatomy through it because I was doing a lot of drawing of anatomy. And I started using it to learn that and I forget things terribly names. I'm just like the names of people, famous artists. I mean, you'd think I would know these things, but honestly, I'm just terrible. And I found this really worked. It really, really worked. And so I was just gonna put it out as a PDF. And then it just grew and it grew and it grew and dislike all things. I just started to work on it more than I should. Because I was passionate about it. And I think when you care about something and you get the bit between your teeth, it's just started thinking, and I was thinking, well actually, you could use time for this and you could use drying for that. And the only thing I'd say about it was that it was extremely difficult for me as the kind of writer of the book, I was outside my comfort zone for a lot, because I was trying to justify how drawing could be used in any subject across the school to try and win over these people who didn't understand why it was relevant. And so I was trying to understand how you might you apply these techniques and languages, or, you know, a bit about DTS, I was okay there, but things like geography or history or math saw. And so I was outside my comfort zone a lot, a lot of the time, and I asked for a lot of help from subject specialists. But everybody was working and saw busy and ended up meeting with it as these things usually do. And yeah, and I just refined it and kind of put it out there. And then I kind of threw it out to LA for design press. And I know Kathy was taken over, and I didn't know whether she was gonna take over the reins. But when she did, she looked at it. And she went, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of definitely do it. And she really loved it.

Alison Hardy: 12:10

When it's coming together really nicely, it's a book. And if and you will use the word passion, just as I was about to say, it's clearly a passion project.

Paul Carney: 12:19

Yeah.

Alison Hardy: 12:20

You know, and, you know, the book is really nicely laid out with the, with the drawings with the text with the photographs. It's a real hands on book and accessible, you know, as, as your other book was, and our slipper design press books are so yeah, it's a really, it's a really nice book. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna move you on to think about that chapter five in your book, because that was sort of where it really resonated for me around drawing within design and technology. And about sort of development and thinking. So join us has a little bit about chapter five, because that's all around four dimensional. Yeah, going in four dimensions, which people might think for about three?

Paul Carney: 13:04

Well, yeah, so obviously, the fourth dimension is time. And that section came about because I was going into hot into hospital. And I was having an operation dawn, and I was flabbergasted at how the hospital administration is so weak and nervous about making mistakes that they duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate, every piece of information, that everyone has to create their own bit of information about things. And I was just about to be put onto the anaesthetic. And the guys turn on me and went, can I just ask you something, Paul? I said, Yes. You he said, What? What are you having done?

Alison Hardy: 14:05

No,

Paul Carney: 14:07

not went? Pardon. He went, I just wanted to kind of know, I just haven't got a clue. I was like, Whoa, I would have thought you should know this. Oh, my goodness. So he went off. And he found the naughty one. All right. Okay, I've kind of found it what it is. And I just thought that, when you're doing something big all the time, you're kind of, you don't always you're not always fully aware of all of the process, you kind of dip in and out of it. And if there's a group of people working on some some thing that they don't always know, all of, they don't know everybody else's parts, often they just know there's and saw, it occurred to me that if the surgeon, a donor, and many surgeons do do kind of draw drawings of things of processes, and this is what we're going to do, Paul, that they could have these drawings in advance and give you them like a set of instructions, this is what we're going to do to you. And you could see the kind of pictures you don't need to translate it to any other language, you can see the pictures that they're gonna, that this is what we're gonna do. And then in the book, I use the example of a hip of operation. But mine wasn't mine was something different. And anyway, so that made me realise that I could the surgeons can have a bank of kind of drawing instructions, and that I could be given this set of instructions and everybody could know these, the same set of sequences, and then we could all work from it. And it's rather like if you go to Ikea nearby your bookcase, like a billy bookcase, and you get a set of instructions. And it's all kind of drawn out stages of that, how to build it, you think great, we can all come do it. But the reality is not like that. The reality of building that bookcase is different for everybody. And you know it, some people don't put this bit the right way around, and some people lose the screws, and some people get frustrated and, and you've got all these different x x experiences. And if then you take that analogy, and you use it, when you're making something and you're planning something and you're designing it, instead of just designing a finished thing, an end product product, if you design the stages of how you're going to make it. And you'll say, well, first, I'm going to do this, and you're not just thinking of it in your head, you're translating those thoughts into a drawing that, you know, engineers do this, architects do it, and they're working trying to throw onto one side. But if you, if you then have a set of instructions for how you need to do this, then you formalise the process by which you're going to make it and then if you when you're doing it, you make further drawings over the instructions of what's going on what kind of happened each stage like, Oh, I got this bit wrong, like, I put too much glue on here and it got messy, and then it wouldn't set or I didn't put a clamp on it or whatever, then the teacher can look at what you've done and instantly see in a visual way are right, this is what you need to do. And you're thinking about it, you're duplicating it, you're going through a process of iteration to repeat your learning mistakes, your learning successes. And I think it's it's that really, it's about nailing down I guess about formalising each of the American stages when you're in the early place. And I read some research by Dr. Bill Wilkinson, of a school in Bath, he's a deputy head of the science department. And he was giving some advice on his webpage about advice for doing practical experiments in such science and why they go wrong. And he said in the first place, the students haven't visualised each stage of the air experiment. They don't know what they're going to do when they're working blind blind blindly. So they don't know that the causality of if I do this, this will happen. And if I do this, that would happen. And so they haven't formalised the process before they begin it. And he said, the issues with practical soft sciences that and he made a list of students don't complete the work correctly. They don't all engage with it. They get aspects of the practical work world and make the wrong discoveries. And they're not thinking about the bigger concept behind why they're actually doing it. And ultimately, they don't remember what the teacher wants them to remember. And I think by going through these stages of drawing your process before you do it helps you to understand how you're going to make it. And yeah,

Alison Hardy: 19:57

I think I found that really, sort of I was thinking about it about how how we do that in design technology. And we used to do storyboards of planning. And that that then became almost artwork in themselves or were too restrictive. Yeah, way. And we used to do flowcharts and search. But I think the way you're talking about it is much more almost as a planning journal and then almost as a reflective journal. Yeah. Yeah. So I sort of see this being with them. And those those drawings are for themselves or not for for show. It's a different way of using drawings. God Yeah,

Paul Carney: 20:39

I mean, I mean, when I was doing dt, there was such an emphasis on presentare Titian and this is a problem in art as well where teachers are rewarding things that are presented well and neat and beautiful and and If you've ever looked at any of my working drawings for art and design, they were never neat, there wouldn't have won any prizes, points or scores for it. Because it's not important in my head, I'm not interested in making a pretty image, I'm interested in the cognitive process behind it. And I think if DT students had a kind of journal a book that they would plan out how they were going to make it and review and evaluate. And the thing about a VA evaluation is it's not a tool to be done, after you have made a thing it can be, but it's better as an ongoing thing, isn't it? Where you, you're doing it as a continual process, and you're doing it anyway, you're doing it in your head. But I think if you're drawing it around your process, your instructions and you're making a little drawings and this went wrong, or this was brilliant, and then it becomes a more important working doc document, really, and I think that's, that's, that's why you're, why you're doing it really to learn.

Alison Hardy: 22:14

Yeah, I could sort of see that, that, that by doing more of that, you know, and I can hear teachers saying, we already have lots to do in the classroom of what you're saying is that these drawings are personal, they're not perfect. You know, they're not neat nonsense. And they are there for learning, they're there for helping the students become autonomous, in what they're doing, rather than trying, I mean, yeah, and strengthening their, their understanding other critical

Paul Carney: 22:44

thinkers is their ability to make the right decisions at the right time and identify this is where it went wrong. And this is what I did wrong. And, and being able to trace that kind of journey back. And with regard to work, Lord, I'm a huge fan of teachers not doing a single scrap more than they have to. And I would say, this is not a tool for you, it's not a burden for you to do it. It's, it's, it's, it's for them, it's for them to kind of do this and then to kit take ownership of it, and do it in any format that suits them. Some people might want to do it in a digital format, some people might want to do it like me on a piece of paper or back of an envelope or whatever. I just think it's, it's, it's something for them to do to strengthen their learning and make them more intelligent, responsive designers.

Alison Hardy: 23:48

Yeah, I think I think something really important about that kind of capturing things in the moment, you know, I know. Richard Kimble and Kay stables do quite a lot of work around children capturing what they were doing by using photographs, as part of a design project that we're doing that was assessed, and the children were able to take photographs or, or, you know, record things. And that's, I think that's really powerful. Because it becomes a memory job, but also it gives them something to reflect on for themselves, about what's been what's been going on. And there has been, we've almost become so much part of that digital age of taking photographs and getting excited as Dan teaches. And I remember when I was teaching, you know, digital cameras, and such as taking photographs of things, we then lost the fact that actually, we could just sketch this, we could just draw it, we could just cut something out and stick it in a scrapbook. And people are used to doing textiles design are more comfortable with that, in many ways of having a scrapbook of their thinking of their exploration. And we've sort of moved away that, from that within design and technology. Some of some people have I'm not saying everybody has, but I really like that way of sketching the process and sketching how you think it's gonna work you've got you've got one having you here about doing an experiment. So you sketch the process, how you how it's meant to work, and then the space to kind of add notes, sketches? About what how did it actually work, you know, and, and to use that as a, as a way of exploring and questioning further, rather than just well, I've done that, and I'm moving on.

Paul Carney: 25:25

Yeah. And I think drawing out some advantages of the photo in that. The photography is brilliant, and it's great. And if you can do it fine. But I think one of the issues I have with it is it needs you to get the cameras out. You've got to take the photos, everybody has to have access to the photos, they've got to work they've got to be charged or then you've got to print it out and stick it in their books and this is that's time consuming. When. And the other benefit to actually drawing it is embodied cognition, the idea that the physical act of actually drawing it, not only strengthens it in your mind, but it, it, it, it makes a journey from your brain to it to a certain surface, it takes the thought out of your brain and onto a surface. externalising it,

Alison Hardy: 26:26

and I think I'm going to interrupt you, because I'm kind of waving my arms and excitement here, which people can't see, obviously. But I think that that body learning the use of the body, as as part of how we learn, there's been so much of a move, that, that all of learning is in the head, you know, I think therefore I am. You know, the cognition is only in the brain, but actually, it involves the body. And it involves the body, you know, and we talk about designers who can see, and Eddie talks about this designers who can see, look at the material and know, what, if they shape it in this way? what that might mean, it might feel like it might look like and and that you can't explain that through writing it you that's come through the use of your body? And yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. And this part of this way of learning, embodied learning, has been sort of cast aside in this focus on knowledge that has to be written down in a textbook. Yeah, rather than involving the body. And there's always been a rejection, I feel in the curriculum, if you look at the back subjects in England, none of those, sorry, if you're a historian or a geographer, and you're listening, they are primarily cognitive brain subjects, and all the subjects that involve the body for outside of the EU back. And I think that in itself is fascinating about what does that mean about the people in, in charge of policy around curriculum? Are they frightened of frightened of their bodies of using their bodies, and that's one of the beauties isn't of art and design and design and technology, and music, and sports. And PE, you know, let's talk to sport because it implies a competition. All of those things that involve the body have kind of been put outside of us as if we're fearful, when in actual fact, they're the spaces where we facilitate students taking risks learning from the act of doing something, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Sorry, it. Because I really, I really, it's the kind of thing, that's my goal to really

Paul Carney: 28:39

Yeah, and it's a huge thing at the moment. I don't know if you know, the work of Oliver corviglia. Orly? Yeah, he's a great kind of thing, theory thinker. He's a great guy to follow on Twitter, Twitter. And he talks a lot about embodied learning. And he's taught me a lot just through his tweets. And he put me on to a book by a lady called Annie Murphy, Paul, called think it's called embodied thinking, or the mindful learn it was just trying to see if I could find it before we went. But if you if you Google, Annie, Murphy, Paul's work anywhere.

Alison Hardy: 29:19

And we'll put a link to that in the show notes, there's been a few things that you've mentioned that I've made notes of that we need to put links in the show notes to that people can follow up and read more and find out more from what you've said,

Paul Carney: 29:29

Yeah, and this book is eggs, honestly, you would love it, it is exactly what you've just been saying. And she talks about the fact that our brain is just part of a bigger organism, but she, she talks about that the fact that our bodies don't end at the edge of our skin, that that it's it's we interact with the world that we can't exist unless we touch things if we interact with them and that we learn through the physical responses we may to everything we touch, see do sense and it's lovely, it's honestly it's a joyful thing to kind of be reminded of how important that is. And embodied thinking I think, is just huge and, and Oliver talks a lot about gestures about how when we're describing something as a teacher, we use our hands we use our, our physicality to, to talk. So it Yeah, and I think drawing is is that really because your ideas in your head and what they translate as onto a drawing on the surface and never the same? It's always like any thought I have in my head. It almost seems better in My head than it was on the paper, I can relate to that. And, and I'm someone who has a lot of skill in terms of drawing. So even I think that it never quite matches up. But that's the beauty of it. And that's, that's, you have to say that your look, it doesn't kind of matter doesn't matter that it's a scruffy drawing, it doesn't matter that it's just a squiggly line. Because I think often we're drawing movements, we're drawing directions, we're drawing instructions of well, this is going to go like that. And you're only going to draw that as a wiggly line, which, I guess what I'm just trying to say is that embody and cognition isn't making pick, pick, pick pictures that look nice all the time. It's describing a series of often intangible things.

Alison Hardy: 31:54

And, and is, and is really, I think, where the way you're talking about it is something that's for the, for the person who's drawing it not for public show.

Paul Carney: 32:01

Yeah. And also, if you even just as a designer, as a tea as a teacher of design it, the thing that that things are always always excite me more than the finished thing is the working kind of drawings that led to it. And I've got a whole kind of collection of drawings of the kind of mini when it was being drawn. If you look at the drawings of the shots, that Renzo Piano audit, and on it, there's something in architecture called nup, napkin Earth. I don't know if you kind of know that, but now that when I can kind of guess where you go with it, yeah. And you can kind of Google it, and it's a thing, and you'll find lots of buildings, and they were drawn on napkins, and kind of be a mutts in meeting places. Because that's where the discussion was taking place. And they drew it. That's the first formalised ideas and the napkin drawings of the shard are just amazing. And that's what excites me. And it's not, that's not about drawing a beautiful presented drawing. That's just your thoughts, isn't it? And that, to me, is what it's all about. Really?

Alison Hardy: 33:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that but that is so hard, isn't it for you? No, no that that dainty teachers work really hard to communicate that to children to explain over and over again, that, that when you're doing these types of sketches, and this drawing, it's not about perfection, it's not about it, it mean, it's about getting the things out of your head, and down, so you can start to play with them in front of you, rather than keeping it contained in your head. But there's this culture of perfection and things be neat. And and also, you know, unfortunately, the assessment tail wagging the learning dog, and it happens for all sorts of reasons. Again, we can't criticise examples and teachers and the system around that. But it's about finding, finding that balance. And it's about teachers having that confidence to take those risks about it in a small and measured way. And I don't mean safe as dictating or outlining what the children should do, but in a way that is, it's kind of got some gentle parameters around it.

Paul Carney: 34:28

Yes, yeah, there's got to be criteria on there. I mean, I've got no issues with that. Everything's got to go on the journey from that rough initial idea to a finished piece. I just guessed that, if that's somewhere the criteria has to stipulate and make space for that. And if it doesn't, and it doesn't express it, and it doesn't stated that we are not looking for presentation, we are looking for the quality of your thinking and your ideas, etc, then it isn't going to be manifest in the work that students and teachers do really. So I think it has to be stipulated. I do a lovely exercise on my training courses where I get teachers to draw a circle, a circle, a circle, just a circle on a piece of paper, you can all try it. And then I say to everybody in the group, right, you've drawn a circle. What I'd like to do now is to transform that into an imagine that if Pick, pick a picture, it can be anything. And I said I'm not looking for the quality of your drawing skills. I'm looking for your ideas as to what you can do with it. And we get them all together and we Issei what not it some people are just making it was Sun circle. It's a sun it's a football. It's And then you get people who are taken into amazing ideas, who haven't necessarily got a brilliant drawing ability, but they've got this Amar imagination. And we don't do that enough in art, let alone di t, we don't get children to imagine. And to, to dream, really to think to invent. The little inventors website is just an amazing DT resource. I mean, if I was teaching DT again, that would be on my list of a project every single year, I would do something based on the little inventors. In my first book, I did you know, where they had to design a cloud catcher and things like that. And, and so yeah, I think we have to make design, dream, the impossible, because the way I look at it, the entire future of our planet is dependent on good design. And this is important is that we're not, and it's been crushed off the national curriculum, at sorry, at exam levels, it's been squashed. And yet, it's fundamentally designs, the most important thing we need to do, and all of our futures rests on it.

Alison Hardy: 37:26

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it's something that we keep coming back to in different conversations on the podcast about the centrality of design. And then why as we talk about design, thinking, David Spangler came on quite a while back talking about design thinking and what makes design thinking different in d&d than it is in in other subjects. It is, for us, I think, condemned to about coming towards a resolution. Rather than doing the work, it is the day my mind's gone blank and Mickey gone with tell me what the word is. And rather than convergent divergent Oh, yeah. You know, so what happens is, in a lot of subjects, they use design thinking for to be divergent to come up with lots of ideas. But then what we do in design and technology, and design, is we kind of tweaked a little bit. But we then start to convert those ideas to lead to a resolution, we do kind of quite a lot of that divergent convergent, it's kind of quite similar.

Paul Carney: 38:26

And that's really important, isn't it. And that's what gets me annoyed about people who criticise creativity that they don't understand that creativity isn't just going off on a tangent, doing anything you like in a non disciplined manner, creativity is having those wild, elaborate thoughts and then refining them and horn in them to make them into a practical, purposeful.

Alison Hardy: 38:54

That's what we're doing our subjects and that's where you're drawing, for learning. In, in a subject where things are being realised into a resolution, whether it's three dimensional, two dimensional digital system or process, those sketches of thinking, and learning and reflecting and evaluating can be can be so important and, and giving students space to do that. Not every lesson not all the time, not in every project, but in in the right spaces. And D and T teachers are expert that these are identifying when we're going to develop this way of thinking, reflecting, communicating, and when are we going to do this type in which part of our planning so we can build up their autonomy, as you know, design thinkers and their and resolve as I can I use the word resolve rather than solutions these days because we're only going to a resolution until somebody comes along and improves it.

Paul Carney: 39:55

Exactly. But I mean, you need the not not not knowledge. You need all of that. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to minimise that in any way. But you also need creativity and there's this misconception that creativity comes after learning the not not not knowledge. And prominent educationalists have said, you can only think about things you know, you can only you can only make something from the kind of knowledge you have, therefore, you need the kind of knowledge first, but that's not the way it's not it might seem like that in your head, but that's not the way it works. You need absolutely to learn things, and then creatively apply them and you do that when you're Five, you do it when you're four, you don't do it when you're finished school and you got a bank full of kind of not knowledge, like, Oh, I'm suddenly going to be able to do things with it. Because the very process of doing things with the kind of knowledge you've got needs to be taught, it needs to be taught, you need to be you dTT is an art teachers are teaching children how to think critically, critically, they're teaching them how to be divergent, then convergent. They're teaching them how to refine. And the two things like a hand in glove, they're not separate entities, really. And I think that's what a lot of people are missing at the moment. And it's, it's too painful to kind of see the where it's happening.

Alison Hardy: 41:48

And I think in our subject, and I've talked about this, previously, we've talked about DMT capability, those things come hand in hand in our subjects, you know, the knowledge and the use of the knowledge and the creation of the knowledge, you know, and enabling children to make those decisions about how they use what they know. And but then that comes down to good curriculum planning about thinking, the teacher needs to be managing that over, over a longer period to allow their capability to grow. You can't do it in blocks, I don't think in in our design subjects, you have to manage it. And I don't want to use the word scaffold, because as my friend Sarah constantly reminds me is scaffolding is put there as things are built, and then it's taken down to the building can stand, right. And if we keep talking about scaffolding, it implies that the scaffolding stays in place in terms of learning. Right. So again, good curriculum planning, I think thinks about how we, when we do put up the scaffolding, and when we take it down to help the building standard see the building standard? I'm not sure where I'm going with that analogy. But yeah, you know,

Paul Carney: 43:04

it's got really good. I mean, the way I was thinking of it, there was when I was at school in 1970, something or other I in secondary school, I was taught how to make a mortise and tenon joint. And that was a big thing. We did woodwork then and I was taught how to make this joint. And I was rubbish I bought. My point is that you could teach somebody how to make one of them joints. And that's the kind of knowledge aspect, but the creative application for it would be, what would you kind of use it for? What what could you use it for exactly what is it used for? Where do we use this joint in chairs or whatever. But what else could you do with it?

Alison Hardy: 43:57

But it's also asking the question about why do we use it there?

Paul Carney: 44:01

Yeah, yeah.

Alison Hardy: 44:02

Why that one? Not that one? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely no. And then what we get caught up in, as you say, you know, I wasn't very good at doing a mortise and tenon joint is, we get caught up in the craft of the joints rather than thinking the application and the structure of the joint or where it's used and what the possibilities are with it.

Paul Carney: 44:23

Yeah, for sure. Okay.

Alison Hardy: 44:27

Good. All right. Well, we've kind of really come out here, and I'm looking at the time we've been, we've been recording for about 42 to 43 minutes. So and I've made some notes here about things that I think I think I'm gonna have to get you back on the podcast, that's gonna talk about embodied learning. And and there's a couple of other people who do some work around this. And so we may think about setting up a podcast where there's a few people in which we're talking about embodied learning and what that means in design and technology. And what that looks like.

Paul Carney: 44:57

There's one thing there's one thing I can't go without telling you about, I don't know if you've heard of a podcast called 99 P ai. It's called 99%. invisible. Yes, yes, I have heard. It's brilliant for any of you kind of listeners out out there as examples of design. And that's what it's all about. It's all about design in the real world to solve issues and to solve problems and Roman mouths is brilliant. And I love it. It's just joyful to kind of listen to and it really teaches us a lot about what design is and what it's for. So

Alison Hardy: 45:33

I might ask you to email me some recommendations of particular episodes that people to listen to, and I'll put some links in the show notes and that'd be that'd be really great that we could follow that up.

Paul Carney: 45:42

Well, here's one for you then just one that is brilliant. Listen to the one called Batman and the bridge Bill builder.

Alison Hardy: 45:53

Batman and the bridge builder, right. Okay. I I'm writing that down.

Paul Carney: 45:58

Brilliant, brilliant example of the unintentional consequences of designing things. Brilliant.

Alison Hardy: 46:06

Right. Okay. So the broadcast, we could talk about unintentional designs. Right. Okay, we're

Paul Carney: 46:13

gonna stop. Yes, we will. We will I will cut the shadow.

Alison Hardy: 46:17

No, no, no, no, it's been absolutely great. I just love talking with you. People don't know that we actually had half an hour before. And during that conversation, I'm thinking we could be recording. Anyway. Okay. Anyway. So Paul, can you tell us where people can find your book and where they can find you,

Paul Carney: 46:34

you can go on my website, which is Paul Kearney, arts.com. And if you buy the book through my website, I will give you a signed edition. And

Alison Hardy: 46:44

it stops me feeling special.

Paul Carney: 46:47

Sorry, but if you buy it, also through Loughborough design, press. They sell it. It's a little bit more expensive from my website, because you would get postage costs added to that. But you can also buy it from bookstores, not physical shops, because it's print on demand book, but you could get it through the grip British bookstore.

Alison Hardy: 47:14

I was gonna say that someone that loves design press. Yes. But we're trying to avoid Amazon.

Paul Carney: 47:18

Yeah. Yeah, we don't want to use Amazon. But plus the fact that's only a Kindle version anywhere, so. Right. Okay,

Alison Hardy: 47:26

so right. That's great. Well, thanks ever so much. And I'll put all those links to your website. And you on Twitter and to the book as well. Yeah. In the show notes, but as usual, Paul, it's been absolutely great to talk to you. We kind of planned to talk about one thing and we as usual, spiralled. It's pretty much the good, my mind buzzing.

Paul Carney: 47:45

Yeah. Lovely. That's great and lovely. And I'll send you over the links if you come need them.

Alison Hardy: 47:53

Thanks, Paul.

Paul Carney: 47:54

Brilliant.