What is D&T Capability? Back to Basics

In this episode, I delve into the fundamental purpose of the design and technology curriculum, focusing on the concept of D&T capability. Drawing from seminal research by Richard Kimball and Kay Stables, I explore how this capability encompasses creative and critical thinking, problem-solving, and solution creation within authentic contexts.

I unpack how D&T capability isn't something that simply emerges through teaching knowledge and practical skills – it requires careful, structured curriculum planning. The episode highlights two particularly fascinating aspects: the role of iterative design (which, contrary to popular belief, isn't a new concept from the 2013 National Curriculum), and the importance of authentic learning contexts that can extend into unknown future scenarios.

For D&T teachers, this episode offers valuable insights into curriculum planning that deliberately develops pupils' capacity for creative and critical thinking over time. Whether you're teaching in primary or secondary, you'll find practical considerations for building what I call pupils' 'growing toolbox' of technical skills, strategic thinking, and designerly strategies.

This exploration of D&T capability is particularly relevant as schools continue to shape their curriculum intent. How do you structure your curriculum to develop these capabilities? Are you planning for progression from Year 1 through to GCSE and beyond?

Connect with me through Speakpipe or email to share your thoughts on developing D&T capability in your context. Links are in the show notes, and if you find the podcast valuable, consider becoming a patron to support this work.

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.

Chapters

• 0:06 Developing Design and Technology Capability
• 9:40 Supporting D&T Community Podcast

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:06

You're listening to the Talking D&T podcast. I'm Dr Alison Hardy, a writer, researcher and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode I share views, news and opinions about D&T. This is the first episode in my series looking at what the research says about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for design and technology. So this week I want to start with talking about what's the purpose of the curriculum in design and technology. Where is it leading to? What's it for? Now, this is not in relation to what's the value of the subject, which is what I look at in my research when I ask people why they think what the purpose of the subject is. This is about what's the intent of the curriculum, what's it for, what's it doing? And the consistent thing that comes out in the literature is the concept of design and technology capability. Now, this is something that was very predominant in the first parts of the national curriculum when it first came out in the 1990s, led by the work from Richard Kimball and Kay Stables, where they were looking at what do we assess in design and technology, and they identified that it was design and technology capability, and they defined this capability as the ability to engage in creative and critical thinking to solve problems, create solutions, emphasising the importance of the context being authentic, authentic that the children are responding to. That children use the iterative design processes, so they're going back and forth their diagram, which you might be familiar with, about the hand and the mind. There's some critique of that which I might come on to and this integration of theory and practice, not the separation of them, but an integration. So the knowing and the doing has been essential components of design and technology capability, and they argue that this development of design and technology capability is related to the concept of designerly well-being, which is about the satisfaction and confidence gained from engaging in design activities. That's kind of like a, an outcome of developing pupils dnt capability. But we need to see these two things as separate the curriculum intent, the purpose, and design and technology, according to the literature, is the development of pupils design and technology capability, and a consequence of that is the gaining the also development. It's like a sideshoe almost, but it's actually very central to designerly well-being, which comes from the satisfaction and confidence gained from, you know, taking part in and responding to authentic design activities. So so, if that's the intent and let's make it clear that that this intent of developing children's dnt capability is not something that well. We do lots of teaching of knowledge and developing practical skills, and then it appears it has to come through structured planning of the curriculum in terms of developing children's D&T capability over time, and so the role of the teacher in developing pupils' D&T capability is really key, and the research gained from Richard Kimball and Kay Stables talks very strongly about the role.

Alison Hardy: 3:59

The iterative design process, as I've said, you know this continuous refinement of ideas through feedback and reflection, this going back and forth. You know, when the phrase iterative design appeared in the 2013 National Curriculum, people treated it as if it was something brand new, as if it was radical. But actually this has been around as a concept and as a strategy or a way of thinking and doing in design, you know, for decades. It's not, it's not a new concept. So I think we need to be really careful about this, and that's why I think going back to the literature is important and I'll put some links in the show notes to some of the key literature for this and, as I said, it's you know teachers need to plan then, excuse me therefore, opportunities for children to develop that ability of doing the you know, of refining ideas through feedback and reflection and there's lots of strategies that teachers can use for this and that's more in the in the pedagogy section. But it grows over time dnt capability.

Alison Hardy: 5:05

So how would that look? If you're um, you know developing pupils ability to be iterative. You know how, how would you do that, and you do that through teacher talk and you do that over time and you plan that in your curriculum. So we're talking from year one through to year two and so on. You know, lower primary, upper primary, lower secondary, upper secondary. It's deliberately planned into the curriculum to develop that and therefore, alongside that, children's knowledge of different things in design and technology needs to be deliberately planned into the curriculum.

Alison Hardy: 5:44

In design and technology needs to be deliberately planned into the curriculum and they need to be given opportunity to practice those skills, those strategies as designers and as makers, in terms of realizing their ideas, in terms of you know them, seeing their solutions to these problems and being able to create these solutions. Okay, so these things are are very, um, deliberate in terms of a teacher's planning. So you can hear that I've I've not talked about projects yet and that, again, is is quite deliberate. I'm going to talk about projects in a later episode as a pedagogical approach, um, but here I'm talking about what does the teacher do over time to develop children's design and technology capability and that's their growing capacity to engage in creative and critical thinking.

Alison Hardy: 6:31

Growing capacity doesn't just appear to engage in creative and critical thinking, to solve problems and create solutions, and to do that they need technical skills, strategic thinking, reflective practices, designerly strategies and you know, communication strategies and all sorts. So you have to deliberately teach these things. They have a growing toolbox. This is, the children have a growing toolbox that they can draw on when they are responding and this is the next key thing to authentic context. Okay, so that's that's. That's another key element. So this is where the context that children respond to in terms of them developing their de-intercapability and I'm separating this out from assessment okay, two separate things.

Alison Hardy: 7:19

Sometimes you have formative as part of the development, but you know, let's be careful, we're not thinking about summative here. How are you developing that over time in an authentic way? Because one of the key things about design and technology is it's grounded in reality. Now, again, let's clarify that these realities can be unknown. Again, let's clarify that these realities can be unknown. Ok, this is one of the exciting things about design and technology is that good D&T teachers think about how children are able to project from history and today information into the future, about how people might respond and take on different technologies, different designs, different cultural developments and what that might mean in terms of the field of design and technology. You can see. That's where product analysis comes in. That's another strategy that we'll maybe talk about when I talk about what the research says about pedagogy. So the teacher's role here is about creating authentic learning experiences, encouraging iterative design through deliberately introducing strategies to enable the children to do this it doesn't just happen and then, alongside that, fostering collaboration that encourages teamwork and group work. So these things are all really key in the development of children's design and technology capability.

Alison Hardy: 8:50

So I felt it was important to start this series talking about this, because design and technology capability is the intent. It's what the curriculum is designed to develop. So if we don't understand where we're going and what we're building, okay. If we have no plan, well. If we don't know what the concept is that we're building, then we can't plan for it and then the planning becomes disjointed, which I think is sometimes what we do see in design and technology. So that's what the literature says about the curriculum intent of design and technology. In the next episodes I'll be talking about what the role of knowledge is in the development of pupils' D&T capability. As ever, thanks for listening and I'd be really interested to hear about how you structure your curriculum to develop pupils' D&T capability.

Alison Hardy: 9:40

I'm Dr Alison Hardy and you've been listening to the Talking D&T podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, then do subscribe on whatever platform you use, and do consider leaving a review, as it does help others find the podcast. I do the podcast because I want to support the D&T community in developing their practice, so please do share the podcast with your D&T community. If you want to respond to something I've talked about or have an idea for a future episode, then either leave me a voice memo via Speakpipe or drop me an email. You can find details about me, the podcast and how to connect with me on my website, dralisonhardycom. Also, if you want to support the podcast financially, you can become a patron. Links to Speakpipe, patreon and my website are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.