Pedagogy & Design: Clarifying Teaching Methods in D&T

Drawing a clear line between how we teach and what we teach seems straightforward—until you step into a Design & Technology classroom. In this thought-provoking exploration of pedagogy in D&T education, I unpack why teachers often blur the boundaries between teaching methods and curriculum content, sometimes without realising it.

The heart of effective D&T education lies in developing students' design and technology capability, but this requires navigating complex terrain. When we structure lessons around design processes without explicitly highlighting those processes as strategies students can adopt independently, we risk creating what researcher Bob McCormick calls "the ritual of the design project." Students follow prescribed steps without developing true capability—they complete the activities without gaining the metacognitive awareness needed to transfer these approaches to new contexts.

Through practical examples like the 6-3-5 collaborative design technique and tool demonstrations, I illustrate the difference between clear pedagogical separation (when demonstrating cutting techniques) and problematic blending (when teaching design processes). This distinction matters profoundly: when students don't recognise a design strategy as a transferable tool they can apply independently, their development as designers is limited. They become dependent on teacher-led frameworks rather than developing autonomous design thinking.

For D&T educators, this episode offers an opportunity to reflect on your teaching practice. Are you explicitly highlighting design strategies as transferable tools? Do your students recognise when they're learning processes they can apply independently? How might restructuring your lessons enhance students' ability to develop genuine capability rather than just following teacher-led frameworks?

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.

Mentioned in the show

1. Andrew Pollard's text about pedagogy - the reflective teaching book
2. Bob McCormick's paper about "the ritual of the design project"
3. Reference to Non-examined assessment (NEA) - coursework in England
4. Matt McClain's work on demonstrations as a teaching approach
5. The 6-3-5 technique of designing (design strategy where students fold A3 paper into six

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Upcoming Series
• 3:39 Defining Pedagogy in Design & Technology
• 5:48 The Complexity of Teaching D&T Capability
• 7:34 Separating Pedagogy from Curriculum
• 10:22 The Demonstration as Clear Pedagogy
• 12:54 The 6-3-5 Design Technique Example
• 15:59 Episode Closing & Contact Information

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 1:22

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 and I'm also going to do a quick advert now for a series I'm about to start recording with Alice Hellard and Sarah Davis about pedagogy in D&T, where we're going to be talking about particular pedagogical approaches that we could commonly seen in D&T and unpicking them, having a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek prod at them, and also unpicking what the research says about them and also then how they are and can be used effectively in design and technology. So that's up and coming. So that means in the next few weeks, although I'm focusing on pedagogy in D&T and what the research says, I'm not going to be going into too many specifics in D&T and what the research says, I'm not going to be going into too many specifics. So just this week I want to give an overview about what I mean about pedagogy, and the literature is really quite clear about this, although I think there is sometimes confusion when I read design and technology literature. The general research is quite clear that pedagogy is about the teaching methods and approaches used by the teacher. So that's, the ones that the teacher selects that are the most appropriate for teaching a particular piece of knowledge, process, skill attributes or value. Ok, so teachers make choices and again, as I said, this is quite clear in the literature about pedagogy relates to what the teacher decides to do to help children learn in the best way possible, which I've summarized that very well, but I think you know what I mean. I would recommend that you have a look at Andrew Pollard's text about pedagogy where the reflective teaching book that he led. I think he's got some really good stuff in there about, you know, defining what we mean by pedagogy more generally. So that was the first thing that I wanted to focus on, and so I want to also then reflect back on the earlier episodes in this series, where I talk about the intent of design and technology being design and technology capability. So again, teachers in design and technology select strategies, select teaching approaches that will enable children to achieve their potential in developing their design and technology capability.

Alison Hardy: 3:58

Okay, and it's complex Okay. So let's not pretend that any of this is complex. Sorry, any of this is straightforward, crikey. I got myself a bit lost there. That any of this is straightforward. It is complex because you've now got you know, you're aware that we're developing children's design and technology capability, that that is underpinned by a growing depth and breadth of knowledge in those two particular aspects of design and technological, and then the other two aspects of procedural and conceptual. So you've got that complexity about, as a teacher, being aware about what is it that you're teaching and how is that contributing to the development of their D&D capability. But you, as a professional, have an awareness of the situation that you're in, the children that you're teaching, what they previously have learnt and done and experienced and what you know is upcoming. And then also, alongside that, you understand the resourcing. You know what there is within the facilities, the school, the space that you have and also the amount of time you in terms of thinking about what will be taught and when it will be taught and how children might make use of that knowledge in developing their dnt capability.

Alison Hardy: 5:30

So just wanted to get that clear at the beginning of this next few episodes about being clear about what pedagogy is and being clear about its complexity. But I also want to clarify that when we're selecting, when you're selecting a pedagogical approach, it's very easy, I think sometimes in design and technology and this happens in the literature I'm not going to name any names about any particular text that I've read that I think this happens, that there's the pedagogy, what the teachers are doing, their approaches for children learning, and then what's being taught, what pupils learn, the curriculum, and a lot in the literature and design and technology. These two are blended to such a way that it's very difficult to see where one starts and the other one. Sorry, where one ends and the other one starts where one starts and the other one. Sorry, where one ends and the other one starts. So I think we've got to be really clear that. I think it's an iterative process when you're designing a lesson, because you're going back and forth between what the pupils will learn, the curriculum and how you will teach it. But I think you have to be clear that there is a separation. And then I think we have a uniqueness in design and technology of how these do blend is that sometimes we are using, we are teaching, a design strategy, for example, but it ends up becoming a pedagogical approach and then that means that the children don't see the distinction.

Alison Hardy: 7:15

Now Bob McCormick talks about this in his paper about the ritual of the design project, where and we see this and I'm going to be coming on in a future episode to talk about design and make activities where a teacher designs the curriculum as a design and make activity with different aspects of a design process, from identifying the need, doing some research, writing a specification and so on. So each lesson is almost structured around one aspect of that process, that design process that the teacher is following, and it becomes a ritual. But there's an assumption sometimes from the teacher and I've done this is that the children know they are learning not only about, for example, a particular way of writing a specification or a new strategy for gaining research or about some new materials that they've got access to for this particular design project, but because that has all been framed by this selected design process by the teacher and the teacher thinks they're also teaching the design process and I don't like using the word the in front of design process because we know there isn't a single design process that the teacher thinks that the children is seeing that process through experiencing it and Bob McCormick talks about in his paper that that that doesn't happen and it becomes so ritualized that actually it doesn't help with developing children's D&T capability because they think they've just got to go through these steps and I'm going to go off a slight tangent. I think the NEA is is part of that problem. The non-examined assessment and for those of you who are listening outside of England, that's coursework, that's examined coursework, where children undertake a design and make and evaluate to introduce Matt McClain's language design, make and evaluate. So I'm going to give an example here of. Well, I've given the example there of a design process that is framing a project.

Alison Hardy: 9:39

Another very distinct one, which doesn't get blurred, is one that Matt McLean does write about a lot, which is the demonstration. So what a teacher is doing when they are demonstrating a process is they are modeling the process and they think aloud sometimes when they're doing it. So I know, for example, when I've shown children how to use hand tools for cutting, I've thought aloud about how I'm standing, how I'm holding the material, how I'm holding the tool to do the cutting, where I'm placing the blades to do the cutting and the action is, you know, going backwards and forwards. I talk it out loud because I'm modelling the action that I want the children to take. And so the pedagogical approach is the demonstration. The curriculum artifact thing is them learning how to cut, you know, using a blade with an oscillating motion, right, that's kind of put some fancy words on it so that becomes. That's really explicit, where the pedagogical approach, the demonstration, is very separate from the curriculum artifact, which is the act, the process of cutting.

Alison Hardy: 11:01

But this example I've given of design fiction, not of design fiction, sorry. The design process is that the pedagogical approach is kind of the design process but it's not really explicit. So it's where do you build into the design and make activity the opportunity for the children to step back and see that process and see some of the strengths and weaknesses of the process that you've designed for them to follow. I mentioned there very briefly design fiction. I'm going to not talk about that example. I'm going to talk about an example that I've used when I'm teaching and I might kind of suggest to Alice and Sarah that we talk about.

Alison Hardy: 11:48

This is the 6-3-5 technique of designing, where you fold a piece of A3 paper, so there's six separate boxes. Each of you on the table then starts in the top left box and you have three minutes that's where the three comes from to do a design idea. Okay, and I used to get the children to work in pen and then you'd pass it. The paper would be passed on after three minutes until you get a new piece of paper with one sketch already, and then it would be in the second box, the top right. You'd have another three minutes and the child would then design. They might want to build on what they've already seen, or they might want to come up with a whole new idea, and so on. That would go round. So it'd be basically five moves, and so on. That would go round. So it'd be basically five moves. So ultimately the child would get their piece of paper back with their original one in the top left and five other designs as well as theirs. I mean, the paper might've come back to them once already, so there might be two of their own designs on there.

Alison Hardy: 12:51

But I used to use that technique and it's a really interesting design strategy for generating ideas and doing it as a group. But I wasn't always explicit that they were using the design strategy. I would be using it as a pedagogical approach, and so then at a later date the children weren't able to come back to that strategy and decide to use it for themselves. That's what makes it a design strategy and partly contributing to developing their de-integrability because they have that strategy that they can draw on. But because I, as the teacher, hadn't been clear that that was a design strategy, I'd used it as a pedagogical approach to frame the lesson, expecting that the children would realise it was design strategy. It didn't actually do what I intended it to do. Talked about in the literature, um, this sort of blending of pedagogy and curriculum artifact curriculum thing that's been taught. So I just wanted to start this next section of the series just by talking about that in more detail and to give you something to reflect on and to kind of set the the sort of where I'm going next with the next few episodes, and this sort of blending of pedagogy and curriculum artifact curriculum thing that's been taught. So I just wanted to start this next section of the series just by talking about that in more detail and to give you something to reflect on and to kind of set the the sort of where I'm going next with the next few episodes.

Alison Hardy: 14:44

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.