When outsiders define your field: who decides what counts as value?

In this episode, I share some fascinating early findings from our ongoing survey exploring how people value design and technology compared with art and design. The research reveals both consensus and divergence amongst teachers, lecturers, and sector leaders – and the patterns emerging are already prompting important questions about what we prioritise in our subject.

We've identified five key value themes for design and technology, and I discuss their rank order along with the small but telling gaps in how different groups rate making and careers. The qualitative themes emerging for art and design are particularly intriguing, especially regarding the "outside looking in" perspective that seems to bias the subject towards career preparation. I explore why this matters and what it tells us about how we perceive these closely related subjects.

One of the most significant findings concerns out-of-field teaching and its impact on subject culture. When teachers without specialist backgrounds deliver our subject, how does this shift what we value? And more importantly, what does this mean for curriculum aims and how we assess what students learn?

I discuss practical ways we might align our values with curriculum and assessment, drawing on the emerging data to consider how we bridge the gap between what we say we value and what we actually prioritise in our teaching. There's a clear need for more art and design respondents to refine our analysis, so please do share the survey links in the show notes with colleagues across both subjects.

How might your own values for design and technology align with these emerging themes, and what conversations might this spark in your department?

Link to survey: https://bit.ly/Valueofdesigned

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting up the research
• 1:07 Five value themes in D&T
• 2:46 Who the participants are
• 4:50 Group patterns and alignments
• 7:10 Why DT teachers score some values lower
• 9:33 Pivot to art and design values

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:00

So this morning I recorded an episode about the research I've been doing comparing the values people attribute to design and technology compared to art and design. And as you're the subscribers, I thought I'd give you a little bit more of an insight into the analysis that I've done. So if you've listened to Tuesday, well you'll need to listen to Tuesdays before you listen to today's because otherwise you won't get the flow. There were five themes for the value of design and technology that came out of my research. And when I looked at the sample of people who'd recorded who'd responded to the survey, those who were responding to the design and technology survey, because there were two parts and they could respond to either or or both. Those who responded to the section about the design and technology values of those five different categories of values, the one that came out as as the highest degree of importance is kind of how I can think about it at the moment, was creative and critical thinking. And the one that came out the lowest was careers, life, and the economy. Now there's not a lot in it, to be honest. So if five is the highest, and because it's a five-point Likert scale, creative and critical thinking is just over 4.5, 4.715, and careers life and the economy is at 3.918. So that there's not a huge amount within it, and the more responses I get to the survey, then the more refined we can be in this analysis. But then what becomes really interesting is I was able to categorize the responses by participant. And initially I'd done this survey with predominantly design and technology teachers and university lecturers in design education, not teaching design and technology, but those who are like on product design lecturers or fashion design and so on. They were part of the participants, so they were their one group. And then there was the other, which was made up of people who led national organisations or who weren't lecturers, weren't teachers, might have been involved in awarding bodies. And as I've since reopened the survey, some of these might be art and design teachers. So what I was able to do is map this on a star diagram so you can see the strength of the responses for each of the categories based on the group they are in. And there's a similar trend in that creative and critical thinking comes out as the uh strongest category of importance, um, really with people's relationship with technology next. And then transferable skills for personal development as a collective, the three participant groups were very, very closely aligned. Um, in fact, more aligned than any other category apart from creative and critical thinking. So that's that's interesting. That the strength about it wasn't as strong as creative and critical thinking, it was still very strong, but again, like creative and critical thinking, the three groups, that's other university lecturer and DT teacher, they they had a close agreement. So it's the other two categories where there's a a slight dissonance, and it and it is slight. Um, and it's the design and technology teachers, interestingly, that have the how's the way to put this, the least strength of importance of the value. I'm hoping that's makes sense. Um so the university lecturers and the the other group that kind of makes up the the rest of the participants, um they had close to uh 4.5 in terms of their strength for careers, life and the economy and making and creating. It was actually the lowest for them, both of those compared to all five categories, but it was greater than for the D teachers. So that was a really interesting difference, is that the they all agree that these are all strong, but the DT teachers think these are less strong than the university lecturers and the other groups. So I think I think that's that's really interesting, is that DT teachers whilst they value making and creating and careers, life and the economy, they don't value it with the strength of feeling as others and the university lecturers. I need to do some exploring about why that might be. That might be because those other groups are made of people that either the other, for example, might have people in there who aren't design and technology community, that might be art and design, so they're looking outwards in. Or it might be that like the awarding bodies looking inwards out, trying to uh defend the place of the subject. Why might white my why might DT teachers have these as less? That might be a fear around the making and creating, is that design and technology is potentially labelled as just making stuff? There's actually more complexity to that category than that. Um, and careers, life, and the economy, again, this recognition might be that they see design and technology as part of a general education. Although this is important, it's not as important as teaching pupils about people's relationship with technology, developing their creative and critical thinking and their transferable skills for personal development. So, the more responses I get to the survey, and the links in the show notes for this, the the easier it will be to um uh uh do a comparison. I'm currently, I think, on this particular survey, about 30 participants. So I've got another version of the survey with 300, but that's kind of doing something different, it doesn't have the art and design in there as well. So then if I move on to this within the same survey, participants can respond to telling me what they thought was the value of art and design. So this survey is in the early stages of development, so I'm currently getting the qualitative responses. So the analysis had to be uh thematic, and that came out with uh four themes, which I talked about in Tuesday's episode: career preparation, societal impact, skills for life, creativity, and expression. And when I compare uh the strength of these, this becomes really interesting. Now, now what we have to be aware of is there's more DT stakeholders, that's teachers, awarding bodies, um, leads of national organisations in this cohort of participants, and there are art design specialists. So the more art design people who respond to this, this might shift. Career preparation came out as the uh value that was mentioned by most participants, and the least was about the societal impact, which I which I find I find really interesting. Um, but it had a similar value to the skills for life, which was um the transferable life skills which we see in design and technology. So I think that might be because we've got more people looking from the outside looking in at art and design rather than people who are in art design, and sort of giving that view from being within the community. So the more responses we get to this from art design people, I think that we might start to see some slightly different patterns. So then doing a similar star diagram for the three categories again: DT teacher, other, and university lecturers. So obviously art and design teachers, because at this stage of analysis, there's only a very small handful within here. Um this is this is the the variety between the different participant groups is much greater than it is for the design and technology, and so unsurprisingly, come as I was saying about you know, outwards looking in, the career preparation was the strongest for design and technology teachers. Because when we're trying to advocate for the purpose of a subject that isn't ours, I think what we look at it, so then what's its purpose for that child in the uh longer term for their economic benefits? So I think that's that's why that happens. Um and then for the creative and expression, the DNT teachers and the other the DNT teachers and the university lectures were really closely aligned. Um because there aren't many art and design respondents in this, it it's it's difficult to look at their overall um strength of feeling about this. But I but I think that's just just gives some some insight at the moment. Um what I want to do is develop this um tool for surveying people about the value of art and design, similar to the way I'm able to do it for design and technology, so we can do some comparison because I think it's really interesting about the differences. I think this um looking out, being outside the field and looking in, if you have a particular perception, then if you're asked to move in to teach the subject, what does that mean? If you've got these out of field values and you're moving in field, but you're still don't you're not embedded in the culture of the subject, might you then put different emphasis on things and not understand its value like those who are in the subject do, and then that might cause attention. I've got a doctoral student, Claire Vickery, who's doing some really excellent work looking at out-of-field teaching within design and technology. And I she's looking at when people who have a specialism, say in product design, are then within design and technology teaching some textiles, or if they say they've got an architecture background and they're teaching um you know, around different materials and so on, that she's calling that out of field within design and technology, and that's starting to reveal some tensions. But I wonder if there's some other work we could be doing about because we know that some DT teachers with a textiles background are moving towards art and design. But if they're embedded in the culture of design and technology, what does that mean for art and design if they're teaching within art and design, and vice versa? And I think we we have more and more of that happening because of teacher recruitment issues, and I think that's something we need to explore. So within departments, there can be these conversations about these differences. So, as subscribers, I just wanted to give you a little bit of a different insight, and I hope you found that interesting. And please do share the links that are in the show notes about the survey with others. The more respondents I get, the uh the more rigour um there is there is to the research and the data analysis.