The new D&T GCSE has not gone far enough. Let’s put this idea out there. Whether you agree or not, one of the issues that still remains is that we, the collective D&T teacher cohort (that is rapidly shrinking through retirement and poor recruitment) cannot agree what it is that we are responsible for teaching. The inclusion of Mathematics and Science already featured in their respective course specifications could be seen as worrying, we’re reteaching other subjects because we don’t have enough of our own to teach. I disagree on this point, but that’s a whole other discussion. My mind was directed to this issue a long time ago thanks to a research activity David Barlex conducted, in which he asked new and established teachers of the subject to write down what D&T was. Whilst a group of Science teachers can knock this task out in quite a short time period, D&T never finished it. They simply couldn’t agree. Fast forward to the new GCSE specifications coming out, and in short, we haven’t moved on.
So the new GCSE has morphed into an amalgamation of art principles, scientific principles, mathematics application, and a bit of technology and technical making just to make it feel like D&T as we know it. The new GCSE might for many seem like a huge progressive step forward, and I imagine those who have traditional wood and textile skills will look at the new course with trepidation and excitement in equal measure. How exciting to be teaching enterprise and disruptive technology! What fantastic opportunity there is for a teacher of carpentry and wood work to consider these areas of study. But is it progressive and have we content worth teaching?
Let’s go further
In a recent review of KS3 and KS4 “projects”, in which I have decided to throw out the concept of a project and offer instead evolving contexts, it has been the next stage to identify potential worthy and broad contexts to offer. Whilst planning a Year 13 lesson on social, moral, environmental and ethical design, I visited Core77.com for inspiration, and found my fountain of youth! Well actually I found the “Design for Social Impact” filter in the blog feed on the website. Having read and “case studied” a number of projects that the site features from across the globe, I started to daydream about the notion of offering these challenges to groups of students. This is not new thinking, in fact it feels very much like the approach of STEM that has seen this buzz term succeed so well in schools. Let’s take the need for “pop up shelters” in safe zones following war or a natural disaster. The product needs to be small, light, cost effective, human centred in its design, and be prototyped many times iteratively until it is fit for purpose. Sounds very STEM. Sounds very new GCSE too.
Mapping Social Design for Impact into the curriculum
So what happens if you take out all of your previous projects that effectively hand pupils a series of components cut by the technician, giving pupils the challenging learning opportunity of choosing a colour of acrylic, and replace it with these social contexts and map them across your curriculum? Well firstly for me it was important to understand the different types of social design. In a quick scan of the last three months of blogs on the topic, it was possible to identify the following types:
– emergency aid (responsive design)
– child care
– learning (by different social groups)
– helping the disabled access their environment
– water and food (growth and distribution)
– low cost medical solutions (using new technology)
– entrepreneurial design for social trends (in 1st world countries)
– safety (for those doing dangerous jobs)
– energy generation (personal and local)
– helping the poor (individuals, groups, nations)
A live and open blog like Core77 really does give a central place to quickly identify the issues that surround our modern world, and in the past three months you have a snapshot of modern design. And by modern design I mean design that matters, not the latest toilet brush by Phillippe Stark. These are real problems, without answers (yet), and provide genuine opportunity for research, design, prototyping and testing. Most of these design opportunities can be backed up with TED.com talks, which is a really nice feature to a lesson or project, to hear some leading individuals in their field talk passionately about the topic. The site has been used many times to help students understand why we want 3D printing to succeed, not to print custom cereal box giveaways, but to print human organs or casts that accelerate recovery from bone breaks, etc. They are sometimes as good as getting a guest speaker in the door, and much easier to organise.
In mapping these topics to my KS3 curriculum, I was running out of space to squeeze them in, which meant I had the opportunity to rotate contexts each year so that no two year group tackled the same context as the next year group up. One of my departments proud features is that each year group, upon learning what the year group below are doing, says “oh we didn’t get to do that”, or “wish we did that, that sounds really good”. It is a feature of a constantly evolving department that is both agile and forward thinking. In a quick “lob” of the contexts at an imaginary curriculum map, I placed pop up shelters in year 7 alongside energy generation and growing food. Year 8 were dealt the task of safety for those in dangerous work, enterprise design and child care. Year 9, being the more mature, took on low cost medical solutions, helping the disabled and learning. With these in place, and working out what learning “could” take place in each field of design, I had a map of the year to start populating. More on this in future blogs…
Why is D&T worth studying?
Now ask yourself this question. It is the same question my year 9 students and parents will be asking shortly. Why study D&T? Many of you will be having the same “arguments” that the subject is not about becoming a furniture maker, or about using tools and materials. How many children will simply retort “but I don’t want to make things for a living”, and how many parents will simply shun the concept of their child learning such “lowly” skills. Or perhaps the notion of the subject not being academic will play its part. Making instead of reading books and testing, no decision to be made. Perhaps I go too far, maybe not. But what is clear is that the message about social design is strong, it has purpose, and if students want to have a job or career that makes a difference, then they could be working towards this thanks to design. We feature regular assemblies delivered by our charity coordinator, and in each instance we learn about people we want to help, and how to do it. Whilst we raise money and donate food and books, perhaps we could design solutions for lasting change. Would we design something that allows them to make their own books? Who knows.
Now broaden your view of your student’s’ education to consider the whole school picture. How wonderful would it be for students to be tackling issues on poverty, ethically sourcing and designing products that help those on low income to access better food, learning in difficult situations, and living safer more prosperous lives. Sounds like something your school would want others to know. Say… prospective parents, employers, governors, local press maybe. And maybe this is something that your department becomes known for. Social impact through design. Taking the learning in other subjects and using it to make real change. What if your department weren’t known for their bird box display each year, or the marble maze design competition, or dare I say it, the coat hook manufacture. What if you were know for social design that had an impact. Part of the communication of this is through your posters, displays and what the pupils produce. So teaching them how to photograph and superimpose images onto others will help show their designs in context, even if they are just sketches and renderings. Helping students to summarise and communicate complex information into storyboards, display boards or via video is a real life skill and applies across all areas of employment. The new OCR GCSE mentions the requirement to present and pitch ideas as part of the controlled assessment. So there is a real use for these skills in assessment too. Imagine a school where your subject did the most good. Taught them about changing the world now, not reading about what was. Sounds like an opportunity to me.
Going one better but not being a “facilitating subject”
One of the killers of our subject has and will remain to be that it is not a facilitator subject for degree level study. Sadly, D&T is not a required subject of study for anything at degree level beyond perhaps the strictest of design courses (which are also sadly shutting down across the country). What avenue for necessity does design have as an A-Level? Consider Young Enterprise. It is something I run and gets the department busy outside of its subject. It is a national programme, something students opt for, setting up businesses, designing and making products, all for the greater good of donating to charity all of the profit at the end.
Tomorrow my students are selling sweets to generate capital, on what is likely to be one of the coldest days in November. Yet they are motivated, they design and iterate their product, they evaluate and critique, developing as they go, in a real team process. We even create production lines, discuss stock and logistics of shipping, and learn about technology to record sales and market on social media. The students doing it are doing so because on their application form for University they have experiences and skills highly desired by recruiters and employers. They are skill sets that apply across all areas of study, and they show passion and interest in what they are doing. This is how I market my A-Level course, and how if we were to sell our GCSE course and the subject as a whole, we might have a leg to stand on the next time D&T comes under serious threat.
Phil Holton 