TD&T113 When to teach new knowledge in D&T part 2

When is the right time to teach new knowledge in D&T? Maybe a better question is: is there a right time?
In this episode I talk about just-in-time teaching of knowledge.

Episode transcript

Mentioned in this episode

Design and technology in a knowledge economy 

A framework for design decisions Hilda Beaumont (formerly David Barlex)

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:07

In the last episode I talked about when should we teach knowledge in design and technology lessons. And I really focused on kind of what I see and what I hear about in design and technology lessons, and to use Matt McLain's language of front loading, which is the theory lesson, almost like a standalone lesson. And I was kind of critiquing that from my own experience. So in this episode, as I promised, at the end of the last episode, I was going to talk about another approach, which is more of a just in time, teaching of new knowledge, and kind of talk about why that might be appropriate, and when it might not be appropriate, and what some of the issues might be around that. It was a, this idea of just in time sort of happens when pupils are given the design task. And, and then almost with the teacher, there's one way of doing it anyway, is to identify, well, what do we need to know understand to be able to do in order to respond to this design task or context. And this mode of thinking about when we teach new knowledge in design and technology to pupils kind of became quite predominant in its thinking probably, in around the 2000s. And I'm, I'm using some work from Richard Kimbel and David Perry. Maybe I've got David. So they might I kind of get him get to David Perry, a document that they wrote a report they wrote for The Engineering Council called Design and Technology in a knowledge, correct knowledge. Economy, sort of helped me frame some of my thinking here. And so I'm not saying that, that what I'm what I'm talking about here is their thinking. It's my interpretation of it. And I'll put a link in the show notes, as usual, to anything that I mentioned in this episode that you can go back and you can read for yourself, and you can challenge whether you think that I'm giving it the right interpretation, or the wrong interpretation. So this document came out in 2001. And it was kind of like 10 years after the national curriculum had been taught in in England. And they were talking about lots of different things, as reported, it's a really interesting point. And it's given me over the years many much food for thought is about the place of knowledge when it's taught and kind of what its uses are. But they start from this idea of the pedagogy, without the central pedagogy of design and technology is that teachers design a task for pupils to respond to. And in their report, they talk about the idea of wicked problems, which is a whole other thing for another episode. But they talk about the fact that what we're doing in design, the technology is that we're teaching through design tasks, some of the skills, knowledge and understanding that are appropriate to develop pupils design and technology capability. And so therefore, if we're taking that pedagogical approach of the task, the design context, as it's as a signature pedagogy, I'm hoping I've got that right from what Matt McLean talks about, I'm using that concept, that idea of signature pedagogy is appropriately if we take that because what we're mimicking here is what's happening in the outside world around what designers do engineers do, and others who are working in design fit in the design fields, they have a design context, and how they respond to that is what we're mimicking, in the classroom as a pedagogy. And so because those tasks can really vary, it's very difficult is one of the arguments to predetermine the the knowledge that is needed. And so if we do so much front loading, they end up actually not having the knowledge that's needed to respond to the task. So this idea of just in time, is when the task is given, spoken introduced. Whether it's done with the children, or the teacher does it the teacher decides what knowledge skills and values etc, are needed to respond to the task. So both of those, whether it's front loading, if you go back and listen into the last episode, and this one, obviously designed to rely on a huge amount of skill and expertise in planning and understanding how knowledge is structured design and technology from the teacher to be able to plan this. But one of the issues around for example, asking the pupils to identify what knowledge they need to know is kind of how do they decide what knowledge they need to know they kind of need maybe some framework or maybe around materials or understanding markets or understanding construction methods or manufacturing methods or, and so on in designing strategies. So they kind of need a framework to be able to think, well, I need a new way of joining, creating, designing, developing, that I've not used before, because this is a different context. Or they might think, Well, I have some knowledge in this area, but I don't, I don't know. So. So I suppose what my argument here is, is just in time, in many ways, mimics what designers are doing in terms of this task. But designers do know things beforehand, through their experience of other tasks, and their appreciation, critiquing, and so on about other products, other systems, and technologies that they've seen and experienced and used previously. So if we always start with a task, and we ask the pupils, or we introduce the specific knowledge, I think there's a there's an issue there is one, if we ask the pupils, how do they know what they don't know? Maybe they need a framework. And I'm just thinking about the work from Hilda Bowman, formerly David, bollocks around a framework for addressing tasks. And I'll put a link in the show notes I can't remember, and all the different aspects of the Pentagon that, that Hilda uses in that, but that's a framework that we can give to pupils to add their knowledge or for them to aid us to explore to identify what knowledge they don't need. But again, we have we have to teach them some at some point, and which may well not be in the context of a design task. Or we might be thinking, well, we're going to introduce this part of some new knowledge and a framework for it. But the fear becomes is that the new knowledge that the teacher decides to teach is kind of atomized. It's, it's discrete, and the children kind of can't make sense of it. So they're not able to hold that knowledge in a way that they can draw on actively and purposefully, because it's giving them in, in almost a piecemeal. So I think, some kind of schema or framework for the children to make connections between previous knowledge they've got and to be able to understand things, maybe, you know, that are concrete, but in an abstract way, to be able to apply into future tasks is what's needed. So, again, I think there's a real skill in thinking, here's a task, we're going to, we're going to give this context task to the pupils. And that's how we're going to structure the development of their knowledge and skills. But as a teacher, I need to think about well, what did they know previously that they can draw on? But also what? What structures of knowledge? Do they know that they can add this new knowledge or identify what new knowledge they need, but also then over time, that they can do this more autonomously? And I do think we need to be giving pupils chance to be autonomous in a task, because then they're not. If we don't allow them to be autonomous, to make choices to justify, to fail, and so on, in in growing and developing ways in a structured way, then how are they developing their design and technology capability? Because that's what the knowledge is there for it's for them to use in this active, purposeful way, in response to a context, sometimes under close guidance from the teacher identifying what knowledge and sometimes from them identifying what knowledge they need, but that they can do that in a growing way of autonomy. So that allows their design and technology capability to develop. I kind of feel like I've got a little bit lost there because I think this is quite complex. But I think it is complex thinking about curriculum, and thinking about when do we teach pupils new knowledge? And when do we allow them to recognise for themselves that they need new knowledge? And so that's why I think this report from Kimball and Perry that was around in the 2000s, which was around when that the national curriculum was more of a driven around skills than it was around knowledge. And there was much more work on pedagogy in that time than there was in curriculum that this argument about teaching knowledge, and pupils identifying what knowledge they needed, just in time for a task became the predominant curriculum. and also pedagogical approach to design and technology. So if I take the two of this front loading, which I talked about in the last episode, and I talked about my, my lessons that I taught as theory lessons, and then I've reflected and thought, they don't always work, because, you know, the use of the knowledge and design and technology is active and purposeful, and autonomous. But then if it's so much that it's just in time, it can become atomized. And so the pupils aren't building that knowledge. That's why I think, you know, really careful curriculum planning comes into play, and which is where I think about, you know, so that's where I think as we've moved into more in the 2020s, when we're talking about knowledge rich, then the theory lesson has kind of become the predominant pedagogical approach to teaching pupils knowledge, which then means I think design and technology capability, as the focus of what we do in design and technology becomes lost. So really, I'm presenting those two perspectives from a certain historical viewpoint, about how ideas about curriculum and pedagogy have developed over time, and how there are these two, maybe distinct schools of thinking and design and technology, front loading, just in time. But I suppose I would be arguing that there was a place for both. But then what, what sits underneath that is, teachers having a strong understanding about how pupils, learn new knowledge, retain new knowledge. And then what is more important than that, I think it's kind of like the capstone of design and technology is using that knowledge, and then recognising where they have knowledge gaps, and working with the teacher and others to develop and fill those knowledge gaps. So it's complex, is the bottom line of this. And there's two aspects is is curriculum planning, and thinking about pedagogy. And that the tasks we set pupils, whether they are increasingly complex, and what we mean by complex, that they are drawing on previous knowledge, introducing new knowledge is part of our curriculum planning. And then thinking about the curriculum structure, I think, there's another episode that I'm going to come on to it another point is thinking about, and this is, again, going back to deck work by David Perry. It's about a spiral curriculum. But if we're spiralling then what are the threads that are running through that spiral? And as we're spiralling in such a way that we're developing design and technology capability? And pupils? How are we doing that? And what are the building blocks on when are we deliberately introducing those building blocks? And what do we mean by building blocks, and I'm very carefully avoiding the language of knowledge there, because I think it is more complex than just knowledge. So that's, that's today's thinking. And it might change again, it probably will. If I read some more work, I've been reading some work by Robert McCormack about the structure of knowledge and design and technology, which I'm sure I will, at some point, add into the mix. So I'm always curious about how teachers are planning their curriculum and how they're deciding to plan that curriculum, what the frameworks are for that, and how they're weaving, introducing knowledge and skills and procedures, the knowing how the knowing that into the curriculum, when they're choosing to do that, and how they're ensuring that the pupils can retain that knowledge. And again, I'm avoiding language of retrieval practice and testing, quite deliberately. But it's thinking about that, because designing curriculum and design and technology is complex. And I think we have to have these conversations to be able to articulate what it is that we do in design and technology that is unique and different from what is happening in other subjects kind of what's our what's our underpinning, ideas about when to teach new knowledge? How, why and how that's contributing to develop pupils, DNC capability. So as I'm sure you can hear, I'm kind of wrestling with some of these ideas. I'm not, I'm not 100% convinced I've got it right by any stretch. And that's what the podcast is all about. It's a, it's a place for exploration of ideas. Don't take them as written in stone. It's better to look at things that I write than than things that I say, in terms of where I'm at, in thinking about these things, but I really welcome to hear from design and technology teachers about how they're planning their curriculum. I put a call out just recently on different social media platforms to ask if there are any blogs or any reports that teachers written And they're in the public domain that I can read about how they're structuring their curriculum to add into the mix to throw some more thoughts in there. So anyway, as as ever, I'd welcome people's views, thoughts, opinions, and come back disagreements, or whatever. I'm just putting this out on the table to get the conversation going. I hope people have found it interesting and useful. Do come back for more. I will be talking more in future episodes about curriculum and curriculum planning and knowledge in Design and Technology Education.