TD&T112 When to teach new knowledge in D&T

When is the right time to teach pupils new knowledge in D&T? Well, I don't have an answer this week but I do have plenty of thoughts to share. There will be more in the next episode too!

Episode transcript

Debates in D&T Education
Redesigning D&T survey
Me on TikTok
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Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?

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Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:56

Hello, and I hope you've enjoyed the last three episodes where I've been talking about the redesigning D and T project. I just wanted to give an update on that. So the survey is going to close on the 30th of November. So that's only two days away. So if you haven't posted your thoughts about whether the questions that I'm asking, and if it's, if this is the first time I've listening to this podcast, you don't know what I'm talking about. So go back and listen to the last three. But if you have listened to those, and you've got thoughts about those questions, and I posted, you need to get in there quick. I mean, there's gonna be opportunities for you to get involved in the project later on. So don't stress if you've not done it. But if you wanted to give some feedback on whether I was asking the right questions, then now's the time to be doing that between now and the 30th of November 2022. Okay, so that's the, that's the first thing. And then so I suppose Secondly, I want to say thank you very much to everybody who has taken part in that survey, that's been really helpful. I've got a project team, I'm going to tell them a meeting in the next couple of weeks or so to have a look at some of that data. And then we'll be out for the next round of consultation on how we should be redesigning, design and technology curriculum. So that's, that's that part parked. Okay, so this week, what I want to talk about is, when do we teach knowledge in design and technology? Okay, so this is a big topic that I'm not going to cover in its entirety in this episode. And I'm also going to put the usual caveat, these are my preliminary thoughts. I'm not an expert, I've not done a huge amount of reading around this, I've had experience as a design and technology teacher about teaching knowledge, okay. And I'm hesitating there, because you'll if you've listened to the episodes before, we will know that there's lots of different ways of defining what we mean by knowledge in design and technology. But I suppose really, what I'm talking about here is declarative knowledge. And maybe a little bit of procedural knowledge as well. So I'm not claiming here to be an expert, I never do in any of the episodes, I'm sort of sitting here and saying, I'm an opinionated person. And again, if you've not listened to the episodes before, then welcome on board, because this is me giving my opinion about when and how we should teach design and technology knowledge. So I'm going to start by talking a little bit about some of my experience as a teacher. When I taught in secondary school, I'm going to introduce one perspective in this episode, and I'm going to come back and talk about this, again, in another episode about some different ways of thinking about when to teach knowledge in design and technology. Okay, and I'm primarily talking from my secondary school experience. So I'm not making a claim that this is relevant to those colleagues who are teaching primary, there, there may well be some insights there, excuse me that I might share that you will find useful. But please don't think that I'm claiming that everything I'm talking about is relevant to all aspects and all sectors of where design and technology education is taught. Okay, so that's, I think I've got all my caveats out of the way. So let's kind of dive into this. So this is not about what is design and technology knowledge. Okay. I've talked about that previously, this is more about when should it be taught, okay. And I'm talking about it, I suppose more in the context of developing children's design and technology capability. This has kind of become a real focus of my some of the work that I'm doing with a number of different places at the moment thinking about the intents, the purpose of design, and technology is about developing children's design and technology capability. So when I think about when do we teach children, facts about a material or about a process or a strategy for designing ways? I would be thinking about it in the context of thinking about how is that going to develop the children's design and technology capability. So when I talk about design and technology capability, again, I don't have any notes in front of me about this. So I'm probably going to miss remember some of the things that I've spoken about in the past. But it's about developing their ability to make autonomous decisions. And I've talked about autonomy in the past and why autonomy, not independence, making autonomous decisions that are in relationship to their designs as they're developing in relationship to a context. And to be able to do that they have to draw on knowledge that they have or identify knowledge that they need, whether that's, as I said, decorative knowledge and sort of kind of what we might crudely talk about facts, or procedural knowledge about knowing how we, we do things. So that's kind of it's in the round, but it's also about them, developing their identity capability, which involves them being able to justify their decision Humans, why they've chosen to use some knowledge and not other parts where they've chosen to make some design decisions that are a product that they're designing does this and not that. Okay, so that's, that's D&T capability. In a nutshell, I'm sure there are people in the background going, No, you've missed something really important. And so. But anyway, I just kind of wanted to give that as a quick overview, is that when I'm thinking about, when do we teach knowledge? I think one of the first questions needs to be is how is this knowledge that we're teaching to the children going to develop their D and T capability. So that's why I've just given that quick synopsis of D&T capability, because I think we have to, first of all, understand what we mean by D&T capability. And you'll you'll notice that here, I've not spoken about that we're teaching their knowledge for their GCSEs excuse me, or to pass an exam or to to qualify in some aspect. This is about keeping at the heart of what they do their D&T capability. And how this came about this kind of thinking about it was that was in a conversation with quite a few different experts in design and technology. Excuse me, I've got a bit of a frog in my throat. So I had to keep stopping during this and taking a sip of water. And there's kind of like a dichotomy of views about when design and technology, knowledge should be taught. And one person said, what it needs to be taught just in time, so when they're doing a design project, the children recognise or the teacher recognises that the children need to know something new. And that's when it's taught is in that moment. And somebody else said that they didn't say they disagreed. But they presented a different perspective that they would do. And I kind of don't think they've said this word either. Because this work brings me out in a rash. They did a theory lesson, where they taught, you know, kind of a whole collection of related knowledge. So let's kind of break this down into what do we mean by an example. So I'm going to go back to when I was last teaching in secondary schools in Northamptonshire. I did this lesson about different metals. And I kind of always done it when I was teaching, I taught for 11 years in secondary schools, in various different counties in different schools across the across England. And, you know, I often do this, this lesson. And now I don't know whether this is because that was the way I was taught, or the way it's presented in a textbook. So I kind of thought that was a way to teach it. But I would, I would do a lesson where I talk about the different categories of metals. So we talk about pure metals, alloys, and then the other categorizations, for example, ferrous and non ferrous. And kind of, I kind of work around those different categories, and then introduce some specific materials after the obvious ones around like mild steel, aluminium, and so on, that children have access to in a school, and then talk about some of their properties. But in this particular lesson in this guy in the room that I was studying, because kind of it brings me out in a hot sweat just thinking about it. I don't know why I did this. But I was talking about more metals, then kind of maybe just some of the standard ones. And I started talking about bronze. I think my brain just froze because I Okay, carry on. Yeah, it was an alloy. But I didn't, I didn't have any good notes in front of me. I was lazy. And I was relying on you know, stuff that I've done in the past and not checking in. I could not find a life of me. Remember what the composition was of bronze. Don't ask me now. It's kind of one of those these blank moments, I never want to think about, again, about what what bronze is, is composed of. But I actually took two or three lessons to get back to children. I think almost everyone went back to John said, I gave him a different composition of bronze and I went away and looked it up again. There's like different again, in it, which I think is actually the case, if I remember rightly, on bronze, I'm sure that some of you were sat there shouting at the speakers now go out. And it's this. Well, I'm sorry. But you know, I kind of still can't remember. But But my point is, I think when I thought about that lesson soon, I was thinking, why would I teach them about bronze, and I can't even remember the design project we were doing. I mean, I mean, this is gonna sound I think it was them. candlestick holders, and they were using mild steel, for goodness sake. You know, they were given a sheet of mild steel. Like I want to go, this wasn't my project, it was somebody else's. And I've given a sheet above steel, and then some other different bits of mild steel tubing in different shapes square around, and so on, and that they would then cut it and cut into different angles, and then they would braise it on to the master sheet. What a nightmare. One nightmare trying to brace tube onto mild steel sheet that's kind of like I don't know what three mil thick flippin Eck kind of setting them up to fail. Anyway, a whole other conversation talking about my experience of bracing, when I was first starting to teach when I was 90 Anyway. So you got to think why we teach them about bronze when we've made as the teachers the design decisions that they're going to use mild steel. I've not talked about the properties of bronze or mild steel apart from these categorizations of pure and alloy, and ferrous and non ferrous. I've not used the language around strength, tensile strength, ductility, malleability, and search. I've just talked about these different materials, what what's going on there? How is that relevant? And I suppose with the with the distance of time, because that was 13 years ago, when I last taught in a secondary school. I kind of thought, what what was, what was I doing? First of all, I was making myself stressed because I didn't know what what bronze couldn't recall what bronze was made of. But then secondly, I was thinking, Why was I was I teaching it when the children weren't going to use it? Anyway, so in a way, that lesson was an example of what this person in this conversation had said as the opposite to just in time was kind of, to use a word or phrase from Matt McLean's work about demonstrations, was kind of front loading. So what I was doing is I was stood in front of the class chart on the board, you know, PowerPoint, and whatever, different metals, categorising them a little bit about their properties, and a little bit about their uses. So I was front loading these children with this knowledge about design and technology. And sorry about about metals. Now, there are pros and cons to that. So in this episode, I mean, I'm now looking, I'm thinking crikey, I'm 12 minutes in. It's thinking about this idea about a theory lesson, which I do. Sounds very grand philosophically, struggle always. Partly, I think, because of this experience, and and other experiences, and then developing my own thinking and confidence when we talk about design and technology capability is thinking, Why was I doing the front loading in that particular way? In that moment? And so it just got me to thinking is, yes, I think there is a place for front loading, right, that kind of teaching the children about materials, metals in this context, before they handle them. But we need to think about how we're doing it. And I suppose with hindsight, I may well have felt more about the categories and the concepts around the metals, that maybe would have helped the children latch on to different things that they're meant they can extend their knowledge. Now, what I mean by that is when I talked about the metals, I said, I gave them these two categories, ferrous non ferrous, pure and alloy. So obviously, bronze is an alloy. But another category that I could have brought in was there mechanical properties, and then another one their physical properties. And I could have talked about some of the conceptual words, which are kind of abstract in a way, which I've already alluded to around tensile strength, ductility, malleability, and so on like that my mind has now also gone blank on all of those terms at the moment, those concepts, which, which I might have also used in a previous project section with those children when talking about fabrics, or talking about woven fabrics, or talking about timbers or manmade boards. So what I mean is that would have helped the children think, Okay, I've come across those terms before. And now I've been introduced to mild steel, for example, which we know is ductile and malleable to a point. And then it needs annealing. But I would have been able to teach them about these new metals, this new knowledge, but they could have latched on to previous concepts, but also, I maybe wouldn't have done it by a chalk and talk, for example, or a sage on the stage. If one is that kind of language. I might have done it. In in the workshop where the children can handle the metal and they had a chance to hit it, bend it, find it and they might have had mild steel, they probably wouldn't have had bronze, but we might have had some copper, you know, which is very different in feel. And it's mechanical properties, what happens to it when we do things to it, that then when they were designed Getting the candlestick holder. If you don't, if you can't, you can't see me, but you know, I am rolling my eyes out loud at that point, then they would have been able to have that comparison to know some of the limitations and the parameters about what they could do with mild steel. So when they were designing, they, they were able to make design decisions, drawing on the knowledge they had. I'm kind of hoping that makes sense. So I've kind of thrown a lot of things in there. But really, in this episode, I'm talking about this idea of front loading. And even as I've talked, I've kind of moved it more into it into a lesson where they might be doing design work, but a front loading some of that knowledge, but also building on previous knowledge they had, by talking about some of that conceptual language, there's conceptual definitions, about properties of materials that they can then relate back to. So that's where I'm left with, in this episode is thinking about what's the place of front loading and a theory lesson in relationship to developing children's design and technology capability. So that's what I'm thinking. I mean, there's more I can talk about there. And I'm going to come back to this is thinking about how long does that knowledge then be retained? And you've heard me I got everyone what bronze is? And please, no answers on a postcard. But it has, it just makes you think about how do we retain that knowledge? And then if we do want to introduce the idea about GCSE, it's if we're teaching that in year eight. They've got three, four years to be remembering that for Yeah, okay, well, to revision lessons, I get it. But, but it has to be active learners that they're using and design and technology. And I suppose this is the other thing. And that comes back to where I started, is when we're teaching decorative, and procedural knowledge in design and technology education. When are we introducing it in such a way that it is going to be useful for the children in order to develop their design and technology capability? So that's what I leave you with? In thinking about knowledge. I'm going to record another episode, where I talk about this idea about just in time, and trying to think about how does a teacher a plan around that, but that's some food for thought for you. So anyway, before I go, there's a couple more things that I just want to say I've talked about the redesigning project at the start. I just want to mention, I mentioned this too often. I've got a new book coming out in December, it's coming out on December the 27th. It's a second edition of the debates in design and technology education book is out with Routledge. And myself and Claire Vickery are hosting a book club between beginning of December and middle of January. It's all fully booked now. So I'm sorry, there's no more spaces. But listen out for those, we're hopefully going to record those sessions. And they'll come out as podcasts. Because what's really exciting about those because this is an edited book. So there's lots of different people have contributed, that there's four meetings that we're having as a book club, and each one, there's a different author coming along. So we're going to focus on a chapter. So we'll be sharing those in an episode. Hopefully, if the recording goes well. And then if you want to keep up to date, if you think how did I know about this, Alison, then you need to be signed up to my newsletter. There's a link in the show notes for you to do that. And then finally, I put a blog post out at work this week, I work at Nottingham Trent about Twitter about should I stay or should I go? I'm not kind of Sure. Have a read of that. I'll put a link in the show notes. But as a result I've had I'm having a bit of a play with tick tock. As of this evening, I've got one video out I don't know how many more I'm going to do. But kind of come over and join me see what it's like. I'm trying to find people that I know on TikTok if you're there, then make yourself known to me. I'm out there as Dr. Alison Hardy if we could see what other people are doing. If for nothing else a you might give me something to think about and be you might give me something to laugh about. Or see. I might pinch some ideas off you or I might get you on the podcast. Anyway. Thanks for listening folks. Hope you found that useful. I'll be back to talk about just teaching knowledge just in time in the next episode.