D&T knowledge That Sticks: Residual vs Fingertip Learning

Knowledge frameworks matter profoundly in Design and Technology education, yet teachers often struggle to distinguish between what students need to know for a specific project versus what builds lasting capability. This episode tackles that challenge head-on.

In this episode, I explore the concept of knowledge frameworks in design and technology education, continuing my series on what research tells us about D&T. I delve into two types of knowledge that I believe are particularly relevant to our subject: residual knowledge and fingertip/situated knowledge.

Drawing from Christine Counsell's work in history education, I explain how these frameworks can help D&T teachers distinguish between knowledge that serves an immediate design context and knowledge that builds lasting capability. Using a biodiversity garden project as an example, I illustrate how certain knowledge (like specific materials properties) serves the immediate task, while other understanding contributes to transferable skills students carry forward.

This distinction is crucial for curriculum planning. When teaching about materials like chicken wire or bamboo, facts about cutting techniques might be context-specific, but understanding material selection represents residual knowledge that contributes to enduring D&T capability. This framework helps teachers make intentional decisions about what deserves emphasis and retrieval practice.

I also explore the importance of authentic contexts, warning against tokenistic project scenarios while emphasising that engagement remains crucial for effective learning. D&T educators must draw on their understanding of local environments and student interests, adapting resources to create meaningful learning experiences.

For teachers developing units of work, this episode offers both theoretical clarity and practical guidance to navigate the tension between project-based learning and building transferable knowledge. How might this framework transform your approach to curriculum planning and help you build students' D&T capability more effectively? 

Links and Resources Mentioned

1. Christine Counsell's work on residual knowledge and fingertip knowledge in history education
2. McCormick's 2004 paper on situated knowledge in design contexts
3. Kay Stables' work on authentic contexts in D&T education
4. Unit of work about biodiversity in school gardens created by Alison Hardy and Sarah Davies
5. Ofsted research reviews published on their website

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

• 0:00 Introduction to D&T Knowledge Frameworks
• 1:34 Residual vs. Fingertip Knowledge Explained
• 4:22 Applying Knowledge Types to D&T Education
• 8:09 Building Connections Between Materials
• 10:47 Making Contexts Authentic and Meaningful
• 14:40 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:06

you're listening to the talking dnt podcast. I'm dr allison hardy, a writer, researcher and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode I share views, news and opinions about dnt. So in the last couple of episodes in this series about what the research says about dnt, I've set the context of the curriculum purpose being about design and technology ability, and then I've also talked about how we might frame knowledge in design and technology and drawn on some literature for that. Now, this is my interpretation of the literature. Nobody else is, so you might look at similar literature or different literature and come up with something else, but that's where I'm at so far in this series. What's the curriculum purpose? Design and technology capability. How do we structure knowledge in design and technology in a way that is unique to design and technology and helps think about how teachers are talking about that knowledge, planning that knowledge and I'm going to talk about curriculum sequencing in another episode about how that builds up over time.

Alison Hardy: 1:20

Before I move on from thinking about knowledge frameworks for design and technology, I want to talk about two types of knowledge that Christine Council talks about in the context of history that I think are relevant for design and technology education. One is residual knowledge and the other is fingertip knowledge, or it might also be called situated knowledge. I've done some talks recently for a range of different people and I've talked about these as three different categories of knowledge residual, situated and fingertip and I just want to explore what those might mean in detail. There is a very similarity, I think, between situated and fingertip, and so you might kind of say I want to bring those together. But I think, however you look at these, I think this is really useful for helping us think about what are we foregrounding when we're teaching children and what is helping with the context or the situation that the learning is taking place in, the situation that the learning is taking place in. So let's start by getting a bit of a definition about this. So Christine Council talks about these in the history context, and Christine's work has really influenced all school subjects. We only have to look at the research reviews that are published on the Ofsted website to see that We've got to be careful that we don't try and make something from another subject fit design and technology. We have to be able to explore it in a way that is meaningful and possibly reject it, but I think these two are relevant to design and technology.

Alison Hardy: 2:58

So let's just talk about what she says around history. Let's draw on her work. She says that the importance of fingertip knowledge is information that is relevant to a period, and I've read some different blogs by different D&T history teachers even, and some articles where they talk about this being the facts that relate to, say, for example, 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. And then there's the residual knowledge that transcends the topic and helps build a broader sense of period, which might be about royalty and kings and succession within that sort of period, and the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is an example of that. So you can see how the Battle of Hastings is helping frame and build up this residual knowledge that's about royalty and such. Now I'm not going to go into more detail because I feel like I'm already treading on dodgy ground there, where my, you know, I did do a level history and I really am fascinated by history, but if I go any further I can hear historians going. You're just making it up now and so I think I possibly am.

Alison Hardy: 4:10

So I'm going to talk about this now in the context of design and technology. So what are the things? That's, the knowledge that is situated that helps give a context and what is the stuff that's residual. So I would say that if we're teaching giving children design context. So Sarah Davis and I have done a unit of work about biodiversity and the context is about how do you encourage biodiversity in a school garden or school open space, and that understanding of biodiversity is situated knowledge. It's only knowledge that is relevant for that design context. But they, the children, do need to know that to understand how that what they're designing does increase biodiversity, so do need to know that. To understand how that what they're designing does increase biodiversity, so they need to know about biodiversity. They need to know about materials that are suitable for outdoors. For example, we we built into ours, um, that the items that were designed needed to be able to hang. All right, whether they hung off a fence, a tree or whatever, they had to hang in some way. So that's the fingertip knowledge.

Alison Hardy: 5:28

Others might call that the situated knowledge, which is things that are only relevant to that task and that context. Mccormick, in his 2004 paper, talks about this as being knowledge that's embedded in a context. There is a connection between the knowing and the doing in that moment. So some people might say that the situated knowledge. If those children have designed something that's got to hang, and Sarah and I designed in this that we limited the materials that are available and so we actually limited, including things like bamboo and chicken wire. Okay, I'm not going to go into the details of the unit of work that we designed, but you only need to know about how to use those materials in that context.

Alison Hardy: 6:18

So so that's, I think, is what McCormick is talking about this connection between knowing and doing. And they are understanding how things appeal to that context of a garden in a school that increases biodiversity. So it's sort of understanding how designers and technologists might work in that situation. So you might be teaching them strategies that are relevant beyond that context, but you're giving them the opportunity to use them within that context. And then, finally, mccormick talks about situated learning for design and technology, in that the situation is authentic, so it has to be meaningful and culturally purposeful. Okay, kind of get my words mixed up there or tripping over them.

Alison Hardy: 7:08

So when we think about a design project, when we're teaching children in design and technology, the context is more situated and behind that, as a teacher, as an educator, is what's been built up over time. Okay, so if we take this example of biodiversity, what we might be teaching children is some strategies to analyse and explore and understand the place where this object is going to go. So, for example, we talked about the school garden or an outdoor space. So we might teach some strategies that they use, that they practice in the context of the school garden to understand unfamiliar environments from different perspectives that they can then use in a different context. Or when we give them the opportunity that they can select to use that's their that opportunity to select and make a justified choice about using that strategy of understanding an unfamiliar context is the residual knowledge that we want them to get from that.

Alison Hardy: 8:29

Or, for example, I've talked about chicken wire and bamboo. Now, sarah and I picked those materials for a number of different reasons. We weren't after a highly crafted product and we wanted materials that were suitable for outdoors. That understanding that different materials are suitable for different spaces and places and contexts is part of the residual knowledge. So, understanding why materials are suitable for outdoors because they're weatherproof, because they age with the weather, because they're durable, or we might think about finishes that are applied to make them durable for outside that is the residual knowledge that we want them to have. We're using the chickenware and the bamboo as examples. There were other materials.

Alison Hardy: 9:21

Don't think it's just chicken wire and bamboo, but having that clarity as a teacher helps us understand that when we bring in new knowledge, that's about materials and using some of the consistent language. And using some of the consistent language, yes, they remember facts about chicken wire that actually it's quite malleable, that actually it can be cut relatively easily with pliers, it can be snipped okay, we don't necessarily need to be using a saw. That actually, then, when they bring, we bring them a new material, which might be a sheet metal, for example, like aluminium or mild steel, or another sheet material, for example like a cotton, we can still use that same language about malleability. We can still talk about the fact that we used something to snip that had a shear force that was used to cut the chicken wire, which is the same as when we use to cut cotton or with tin snips. So what we're doing, then, is we're helping them build connections between these different materials, all these different processes that they can use when they're given an unfamiliar or a new design context that they can choose from, but also we're mindful, when we're teaching these things of what's in the moment, what's to be retained, in such a way that when they're given new knowledge, taught new knowledge of the new material or a new property or a new strategy to explore an unfamiliar context for example, like interviewing somebody or role-playing that they see that these are adding to things that they're already familiar with, that they've used, practiced in other contexts and this is now another strategy they can use, or another piece of knowledge. So we need to recognise where some of that knowledge is worth memorising and some of it where it's not, and when we are using things like retrieval practice you can't see that I'm slightly pulling your face because I get a little bit twitchy about some of this that we know why we want them to be able to retrieve it because we're developing their D&T capability. So I think it's really important that we differentiate between situated and fingertip knowledge and then what is built over time that contributes to their design and technology capability. However, we need to be careful right, so we have an awareness as educators about these different things, but we need to be aware that the context shouldn't be tokenistic or ill-developed this is Kay Stable's words that the context doesn't fade into the background. It's still important.

Alison Hardy: 12:31

Okay, so understanding the context and that comes back to for me what McCormick says about the authenticity of the activity in which the learning is situated is important Because that engagement is crucial. We know that engagement and motivation is crucial and is kind of tapped into when we give children contexts that are authentic and meaningful to them. And so that's where the teacher's knowledge of their location, their pupils, the challenges around there you know, when I taught in Lincolnshire I was using different contexts that were engaging to the children there than I was, say, when I taught in the Cotswolds or taught in Northamptonshire. So there's many layers to this and they are all important and that is part of your skill as a design and technology educator to think about that. So hopefully that's been helpful For me when I was looking at the research and starting to explore this and questioning Christine Council's ideas about situated fingertip and residual knowledge. That really helped me see how these different things fit together and I'm hoping that helps you when you're thinking about and you lame your. You label your units of work by the project and you you go too much in the opposite direction of what case tables warns us against and you foreground the context to such an extent that we don't think about the residual knowledge that is being built up over time that children can then access in such a purposeful way that we're actively building their D&T capability. It's a real tension. It's a real skill. One size doesn't fit all and I'll maybe come on to that in a future episode talking about how we need to use our judgments when we're presented with units of work, how we can modify them and use our professional judgment to make decisions that are appropriate for the context where our pupils are learning, as ever.

Alison Hardy: 14:40

Thanks for listening. Hope you found that useful and do get back to me if you've got any comments, thoughts or opinions. 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, drallisonhardycom. Also, if you want to support the podcast financially, you can become a patron. Links toipe Patreon and my website are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.