From Tinkering to Teaching: Electronics in D&T

Subscriber-only episode

In this episode of the Talking D&T podcast, I reflect on the evolution of teaching electronics and systems in design and technology education. I share my experiences from when I started teaching in 1993, highlighting the changes and challenges we’ve faced over the years.

One of the main topics I discuss is the importance of maintaining technical rigour while making electronics accessible to students. I explore how the reduction in subject-specific training for teachers has impacted their confidence and effectiveness, especially when teaching out of their field of expertise. This is a significant issue, as it can lead to stress and affect teacher retention.

I also explore the concept of “tinkering” as a valuable learning approach. This method encourages both teachers and students to experiment and play with electronics, fostering a deeper understanding through hands-on experience. I share insights from my colleagues and former students who have successfully integrated tinkering into their teaching practices.

I encourage you to reflect on the ideas presented and discuss them with your colleagues. How can we better support non-specialist D&T teachers? What are the best ways to build teacher confidence and subject knowledge? 

Acknowledgement:
Some of the supplementary content for this podcast episode was crafted with the assistance of Claude, an AI language model developed by Anthropic. While the core content is based on the actual conversation and my editorial direction, Claude helped in refining and structuring information to best serve listeners. This collaborative approach allows me to provide you with concise, informative, and engaging content to complement each episode.

Join my online workshop on 6 November at 4pm to prepare your response to the government's curriculum review. Get insights, discuss key issues, and learn how to submit your views effectively. Your expertise matters - make it count before the 22 November deadline!
Register NOW!

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.

If you listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to rate and/or review the show.

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!

Chapters

• 0:54 Teaching Electronics in Schools
• 8:49 Exploring Electronics in Design Education

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:55

quite unusual for me to have people on the podcast who represent an organization that sells products into schools. So talking to kevin and becky about kitronics and the work that they do and the resources they develop was quite interesting and was, again, just quite unusual. But it got me thinking about the evolution of how electronics and systems and control have been taught in schools. When I first started teaching in 92, you know, there were gcse specs as there always were for different material areas and different aspects of design technology ones for systems and control and one for electronics. Um and my then first and actually only had a department mike ashburn taught systems and control and I've I've not come across anybody, um who teaches it better than mike. Did I mean he really under uh studies stuff? And I learned a lot from working with mike and I'd done quite a lot when I was at university around electronics and you know, designing circuits and such. But Mike had a really different way. He came from an engineering background, a different way of approaching it to me and, yeah, I think Mike's subject knowledge made a huge difference to the way it was taught and his, his views about design and so on and and I know Mike, if he's listening, still does some coding along the way when he's not out walking the dog. But it's just got me thinking about how electronics has moved on when there aren't necessarily the teachers coming in to the subject who have that level of subject knowledge. And teacher training in England has dramatically reduced in the amount of time that is given of subject knowledge and teacher training in England has dramatically reduced in the amount of time that is given to subject knowledge on a training course and it's sort of expected as a given, which I know can be a real challenge. And I've got a doctoral student, claire Vicker, at the moment, who's also a fantastic head of department down in Somerset, who's doing some research on teachers who teach out of field within design and technology. So that's say, for example, if you come in and you've done a degree in product design and you're expected to teach textiles as part of design and technology or electronics, and likewise if you come from a textiles background in your teaching electronics. Claire defines that and it's quite a well-defined concept in education as out of field and I'll put some links in the show notes some of the stuff that claire's claire's done. She spoke at a conference quite recently, um, so it'd be great if you could want to have a listen and see what she's been doing, but it is a.

Alison Hardy: 3:31

It is a real challenge, um, thinking about, if you don't have that subject knowledge, how can you explain? Uh, it's a children, how can you teach it? And then becomes the the fear factor. So my colleague, sarah davis, um with me, or rather it was me with sarah sar. Sarah really led on it.

Alison Hardy: 3:53

We produced some resources with students that we had on our undergraduate, three-year undergraduates. They got a lot of subject time about tinkering with electronics, um, and that was done through textiles as a kind of e-textiles um, but but use this concept of, of tinkering. And then my colleague, jamie tinney, also took that on and took that into some of our teach training stuff. So it's just thinking about how do we maintain this technical rigor while making electronics accessible, um, particularly when we've got teachers coming in who don't have that subject knowledge background and also are teaching out of field, which we know causes teachers to feel vulnerable, stressed and so on, which may well have a link with the retention and attrition rate of teachers, obviously not just in design and technology, but we, you know, I kind of think that the research says that stress that teachers suffer when they're teaching in an area that they're not familiar with, um you know, as a detrimental effect. So I think what Sarah and then later Jamie did, and Polly, if you're listening, and I've got this wrong and Polly did some research again a former student, I'll look at her papers put in there's a link in the show notes and Polly did some work around this as well, around this idea of tinkering. So again, I think that links to some things that I've talked about in the past about resolving things.

Alison Hardy: 5:25

So when we are designing, when children are designing, they children are designing, they are only resolving. They're not finding a solution because they don't have all the knowledge or all the materials and things change and develop. So taking on this idea of tinkering um play, experimenting, having some basic knowledge and then seeing what might happen, is one way of approaching that. So there's a transparency about teachers learning alongside the children, but obviously they still need to be supported by some expertise, some expert knowledge, to understand some of the basic concepts. I think it's a real tension around this.

Alison Hardy: 6:06

So how do we support non-specialist dnt teachers? What are the effective approaches to building teacher confidence and subject knowledge? And I think it goes beyond that as well. I think it goes into thinking about how how do we bring teachers who aren't designer technology teachers, non-specialists into the subject? And it may well be that they're in PGCE in design and technology. They're in a one-year teacher training course in D&T, but their undergraduate degree might have been relatively abstract. We took on somebody at Trent once that came from a music technology background.

Alison Hardy: 6:41

So I think the first thing we have to induct them in think about an induction into the subject is thinking about them knowing what the aims of the subject are. Where are they going? So then, when they're thinking about what subject knowledge it's how they're piecing that together and how it also makes connections with what they already know about developing capability, so thinking about building teacher confidence. So I can see why then teachers who don't have a confidence might look at things like Kitronix, which are designed in such a way and you heard Kevin talk about it, about the design of things to think about how teachers who don't have that subject knowledge can access it.

Alison Hardy: 7:25

But I really think one of the transitions of teachers into design and technology is getting to think about what's the aim of the subject, what's its purpose, and then I think once teachers have a good grasp of that, then the subject knowledge that they already have starts to fall into place in terms of its logic and its purpose in helping children reach and you know, work towards those aims of dnt capability and be able to critique and engage with the made world. So I think that's a really important aspect of thinking about subject knowledge, supporting non-specialist teachers. And then that links to a little bit about this question about how do we maintain technical rigour while making electronics accessible. So I think that idea about tinkering but you have to have subject knowledge, you have to know why you're tinkering to be able to do that and having building blocks for teachers to do that. But I do worry that we don't have teachers coming through that have that technical rigour of understanding systems and control coding and that's a whole other debate, isn't it about? Where does coding fit in design and technology?

Alison Hardy: 8:39

After we had computing come in in 2013 to replace ICT, you know taking on coding and where does that sit within design and technology?

Alison Hardy: 8:49

So I'd be really interested to talk to some teachers who are facing this dilemma. They're doing some coding that they're using, for example, arduino or raspberry pi, or tinkering or e-textiles to to develop children's subject knowledge. But also they have a question about maybe their own subject knowledge, or how do they make electronics accessible? You know we went down a dramatic route to just thinking about a black box, but is that the right way? Is that the only way we can think about electronics and systems in design and technology? So, as usual, if you've got any questions or comments, please do come back to me. I'm always open to those sorts of conversations, but, but this one is one that I've not raised before about, about electronics and coding and, and where does it sit within design and technology? And how do we maintain that rigor and that that subject knowledge actually I'm not even sure maintains the right word how do we re-maintain it? Anyway, over to you. As ever, come back with any thoughts or opinions or viewpoints, always happy to chat.