Deliberate Teaching: The Art of Pedagogical Decision-Making in D&T

What makes for effective teaching in Design & Technology? Returning after a brief hiatus, I delve into the research-backed pedagogical approaches that can transform D&T education. This episode synthesizes my recent exploration of teaching strategies, clarifying the crucial distinction between curriculum (what we teach) and pedagogy (how we develop student capabilities).

At the heart of D&T education lies a persistent misconception I'm determined to challenge: there is no single, correct design process. Drawing on extensive research, I outline four foundational pedagogical approaches: the traditional design-and-make activity, mainly designing (where imagination isn't limited by technical constraints), mainly making (focused on skill development), and exploring technology in society. Throughout these approaches, teachers must navigate the spectrum between restrictive and expansive teaching choices, deciding when to provide structure and when to foster independent thinking.

Recording and documenting the design journey presents another pedagogical decision point. Are traditional booklets limiting student creativity? Could engineer's notebooks, digital portfolios, or multimedia approaches offer more authentic documentation? I examine how deliberate choices about design recording can either restrict or enhance student learning. This episode provides practical guidance for D&T educators committed to moving beyond ritualistic approaches while preparing for my upcoming episode on assessment strategies. 

Links, References and Resources Mentioned

1. Kay Stables' chapter on signature pedagogies: You can find her chapter titled "Signature Pedagogies for Designing: A Speculative Framework for Supporting Learning and Teaching in Design and Technology Education" on SpringerLink.
2. Matt McLain's research on expansive and restrictive approaches in design and technology education: His work on this topic can be found in his thesis on the Liverpool John Moores University repository and in the International Journal of Technology and Design Education.
3. Design fiction as a methodology for designing in unfamiliar contexts: You can explore this methodology in the DRS Digital Library and the Nordes conference proceedings.
4. The Young Foresight Project (early 2000s): Information about this project is available on SpringerLink.
5. Todd Kelly's work on the engineer's notebook as a design assessment tool: His work is detailed in an article on Purdue University's website and on ERIC.

Chapters

• 0:06 Introduction and Podcast Return
• 1:22 Design and Make Pedagogy
• 2:50 Alternative Pedagogical Approaches
• 5:18 Teacher Choices and Planning
• 7:43 Recording Student Design Work
• 9:55 Episode Closing and Next Topics

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 after a brief pause on the podcast, I'm back and I just want to summarize the last few episodes where I've been talking about what the research says about pedagogy in design and technology and there is this constant conflict about what do we mean by pedagogy and what do we mean by curriculum. In very simplistic terms, curriculum is what is being taught. The pedagogy are the choices that teachers make to help the pupils develop in design and technology, and so it's about making those choices, and in the last few episodes I've been talking about different pedagogical choices. That is, drawing on the literature. Now there's many more than what I've talked about in this episode, and if you want to read something that will really bring some of this together, I recommend Kay Stable's chapter on signature pedagogies, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. So let's just summarise what I've been talking about.

Alison Hardy: 1:22

The main pedagogy that appears in design and technology is the design and make activity, the design project, where children are given a context and managed and scaffolded through that activity to realising a solution and evaluating. Now there are drawbacks to this and I've talked about this in earlier episodes where it becomes a ritual and the children don't necessarily realise that they're following a form of a design process. And I have to keep emphasising that because there is nothing that says there is a single way of addressing or responding to a design problem or context or need. There isn't a single design process. I could go off on the tangent here and talk about the design council's double diamond that some people might say well, that's a design process, but I'm going to park that one for now. Okay, so there's a design and make, and that is historic. That's been around for a long time.

Alison Hardy: 2:22

Sometimes the children, when they're doing those designer makes, have more choices or less choices. Matt McLean would talk about that in his research about expansive and restrictive, and those are pedagogical choices that a teacher makes. Another one that I've spoken about is mainly designing, where the final outcome a fully functioning product isn't a requirement, it's more that it's about developing a design idea. So that means that children can be imaginative in terms of not having to be constrained by the knowledge they have or the equipment they have or the materials they have access to to realise their design ideas. We tend to see more and more of this in design and technology about the use of CAD, but I think there's lots of other ways, and I've talked about design fiction as one methodology that could be used by teachers to help children think about designing for unfamiliar contexts or with materials, new and emerging technologies, and many people have written about different ways of doing this. The Young Foresight Project that was around in the early 2000s and you can find that on the website D&T for D&T was about imagining the future and designing for those futures. Donna Treble was one person who wrote about this in her doctoral thesis as well. So mainly designing is another approach.

Alison Hardy: 3:45

Mainly making is thinking about teaching children procedures that are useful when they're making products, when they're realising we might have called this in previous national curricula in England, focus practical tasks. Again, it's not about an outcome. Always it's about maybe learning a new technique or practising a previously learnt skill. It might be that the children do make things and they have something that they can realise and hold in their hands, but that's not always the case. Then the final one is exploring technology in society, where I talked about in the last episode about product analysis, that idea of investigating, disassembling or evaluating an existing product or system, and this would have been known in the early national curriculum iterations in England as ideas, investigation, disassembly and or evaluating. I think the a was analysis or evaluating. So those are the kind of overarching pedagogies and within each of those you can apply Matt McLean's framework of expansive to restrictive about where you're allowing children to make choices and where you're taking the choices for them. And when we're thinking about good pedagogical practice, a teacher is very aware about where they are making those choices for children and also is very aware about the pedagogical choices that the teacher is making. That is, developing children's design and technology capability, drawing on existing or new knowledge that the children are learning and thinking about, how they're able to critique and engage with the made world. So the choices that teachers make are deliberate. So that just starts to summarise some of the things that the research says about what good quality design and technology education might be.

Alison Hardy: 5:31

One of the other things that I explored in an episode was around teachers recognising when they themselves are using a design strategy and using that to develop children's use of that design strategy, but may well not be explicit about it. So that's a really key underpinning thing is that when you're using a design strategy and I talked about the 6-3-5 technique is that, yes, you're using it as a pedagogical activity, but also it's something that you're teaching the children to use independently or autonomously. I've also reiterated about the idea that you make choices in your lessons because you're thinking about the children's development of their design and technology capability. You think about when you're planning a unit of work that has maybe an overarching pedagogical approach, for example, like mainly designing already known. They already know from previous units of work, previous years, and what they need in this particular unit of work, that they need to be able to respond to a particular design context that you've given them. The research also says that you plan so that you're prioritising practising as well, and so that might mean that you have to exclude some opportunities of learning or some new bits of knowledge, because you're thinking about the depth of learning rather than the breadth of learning. Next, you think about that you're not managing the design process too closely so it doesn't become a ritual. And again, bob McCormack is somebody that writes about that, is somebody that writes about that. And then the final thing that is about a pedagogical choice is about how are the pupils recording and developing their designs, their modelling, and what decisions are you making as a teacher?

Alison Hardy: 7:26

The literature talks about the limitations of booklets. They're safe and they can be useful, particularly when you're taking a restrictive pedagogical choice. But because they can be restrictive, that means the opportunity for developing children's design and technology capability may well be limited. So it's that balance again. So it's whether in design and technology there needs to be a number of different ways that you teach children or give children of recording their work. So there's booklets, as I said, there's notebooks, exercise books, sketchbooks or so on, and maybe it's also now about recording photographs and voice recordings. So there's some really interesting work by Todd Kelly. About the engineer's notebook, again, I'll mention this in the show notes he talks about the engineer's notebook as a design assessment tool. Now, be mindful of the language of engineers. Todd Kelly is in America and they talk more about engineering technology rather than design and technology. So just be mindful of that. And he is talking about it as an assessment tool, not necessarily as a strategy that you're teaching the children to record, capture and develop of, when you're asking children to capture and record their development of their designs, for themselves, for assessment or maybe for communication to different types of audiences. So, again, these choices are deliberate. You don't necessarily need to communicate all of this to the children, but I think you do when you're thinking about you're presenting them with these different ways of recording In this unit of work. For example, we are going to use a combination of a sketchbook and an online portfolio with photos and videos, because that will be able to be a record of how your ideas have developed. You might want to be explicit about that. So then they gain. They have that within their toolbox. So I hope you found that sort of mini section about pedagogy and today's summary of those helpful. I'm going to be moving on to thinking about assessment in design and technology and what the literature says about this in the next episodes.

Alison Hardy: 9:55

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.