Exploring Product Analysis as Signature Pedagogy in D&T

In this episode of the Talking D&T podcast, I explore the pedagogical approach of product analysis, often known as IDEAS (Investigation, Disassembly, Evaluation, and Analysis). I examine how this signature pedagogy helps develop learners' understanding of technology in society—a core aim of the National Curriculum in England.

I discuss how product analysis bridges curriculum and pedagogy by teaching pupils to examine artefacts through multiple lenses. When handled thoughtfully, this approach enables young people to develop technological knowledge by understanding not just how products function, but why certain materials, components and manufacturing processes were selected.

My conversation highlights two particularly valuable aspects of product analysis:

Firstly, how physical interaction with products—handling a hair clip or observing people using a door—provides unique insights into design decisions and functionality that theoretical discussion alone cannot achieve.

Secondly, how examining products helps pupils recognise technological determinism—the reciprocal relationship between how technology shapes society and how society shapes technology.

Whether you're teaching primary or secondary D&T, this pedagogical approach offers rich opportunities to develop critical thinking and analytical skills. Consider how you might structure IDEAS activities with clear learning intentions: Are you focusing on materials selection, product evolution over time, or user experience?

Have you found effective ways to structure product analysis in your classroom? What impact have these approaches had on your pupils' design thinking and technological understanding? I'd love to hear your experiences.

Acknowledgement:
Some of the supplementary content for this podcast episode was crafted with the assistance of Claude, an AI language model developed by Anthropic. While the core content is based on the actual conversation and my editorial direction, Claude helped in refining and structuring information to best serve listeners. This collaborative approach allows me to provide you with concise, informative, and engaging content to complement each episode.

Chapters

• 0:06 Introduction to the podcast
• 0:18 Product analysis as the fourth signature pedagogy
• 1:35 Technology's role in shaping society
• 3:02 Structuring product analysis activities
• 6:01 Exploring technology in classroom practice
• 10:03 Closing and contact information

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. In this final episode of the pedagogy section of my series what the Research Says About Design and Technology I want to focus on a fourth signature, pedagogy, which design and technology teachers in England might be more familiar with calling product analysis. This has also been known by the acronym IDEAS, which was Investigation, disassembly, evaluation and Analysis, and I think those four aspects are really key and there wasn't again an awful lot of literature around this. Gwyneth Owen Jackson and Torben Stieg talk about product analysis as an idea of disassembling, evaluating, investigating a product in their chapter within the book Design and Technology for the Next Generation. But, as I said, there isn't a little bit of research that some people have done as thinking about how designers look at different products and how they have designed those different products. So if we take this idea of looking at a product, we can say that it comes under the heading of exploring design and technology in society and if we think back to the national curriculum aims in England, we can see that this understanding of the place of technology in society, how it shapes what we do, how we live, how we work and also how we shape technology. That is a really key component of an aim of design and technology. Now, I've talked quite extensively about design and technology capability, but this part of it is really important as well this aim of understanding this role, shaping, forming of technology and the impact it has on us and we have on it. And in the research that I've done about what people value about design and technology, this aim came through quite strongly and when I was looking at heading it, I drew on the work of Steve Cole and thinking about the importance of doing this in a democratic society as being able to critique and analyse and evaluate the impact of technological developments, and what Steve starts to call it is technological determinism, this idea of us determining it and it determining us.

Alison Hardy: 2:58

I remember having a conversation with a colleague, court Seaman, who's done some podcasts very early on for me about technology and technological developments, and we were walking, uh, through london and we talked about I mean, this was 2013, 14 I think it was. We were talking about you know, zebra crossings, you know in england, where you press a button and it tells you to wait, and that's how technology is determining what we do, that algorithm that is within that artifact, that product, is determining when we should cross and when others should stop. So helping children, teaching children how to look at products in this way, is really important, and it's again going back to this blurring of pedagogy and curriculum. So we're teaching children how to look at products differently, but we're also teaching children methods for looking at products in the same way that a designer, technologist, an engineer, a fashion designer might look at existing products to learn from them. And that's where you're using the product analysis in multiple different ways. It's a pedagogical approach. It's an activity where you might be asking them to investigate, disassemble, evaluate or analyze an existing product or system and you're structuring it. But you're possibly structuring that around a particular strategy disassembly, for example, working out, then doing an exploded drawing that you're wanting them. So that's a technique that they could use and choose to use independently, but you're using it as a pedagogical approach that they could then use that exploded sort of view of it, by them having taken it apart to think about how it's constructed and how it works, which is a form of technological knowledge, because in terms of thinking about technological knowledge. It's not just having an understanding of, and being able to do different processes, it's also being able to understand how a product or a system functions, how it does what it needs to do, and this is in much more detail than that design knowledge of having an approximate idea, an overall idea of the concept of the idea. Here it's about understanding that much more in detail and obviously, as a teacher, you would structure that over time for those artefacts and products to become more and more complex.

Alison Hardy: 5:46

So, as a teacher, if you're planning an ideas activity, investigation, disassembly, evaluation or analysis, you need to be thinking about what is the pedagogical approach? What is the focus of this activity, this idea? Which one is it an, I, a, d, an e and an a? Are you looking at, for example, the materials used? Why that material, not that material? You, for example, produce a product that's got a slightly damaged casing.

Alison Hardy: 6:22

I'm looking here at one of these spring-loaded hair clips that I use to hold my hair up sometimes and it's got a spring in it and the spring's been painted a colour. I've got a number of different colours, but the pin keeps coming out. So we could look at the effectiveness of the product. Why doesn't it have a cap to hold the other end of the pin on? What happens if it does come out? Does that make it more disposable? Okay, then we can also look at how the product works, the fact that it's spring-loaded, the fact that the plastic that's used is relatively soft so it doesn't pinch into my hair or rip my hair, and then we can also look at a product in a different way, about where the idea originated from, so you might be able to talk to children about that.

Alison Hardy: 7:07

Some ideas develop because it's a new material or a new process which gives new opportunities. Myself and Sarah did a product analysis over a time of baby's bottles. Myself and Sarah did a product analysis over a time of baby's bottles, showing how products developed over time because of sociological changes, material changes and so on that caused that baby's bottle from you know, in the early 1200s, for example, right the way through to modern times. And why do children need to be hold them now and why weren't they holding them when they were much younger, and so on. And then also the impact a new design has on its intended users. That's another way of thinking about product analysis. So there's these different ways of exploring technology in society.

Alison Hardy: 7:54

And I'm doing this and I'm not. I don't do a video, I keep thinking about doing a video podcast, but anyway I don't, and I'm kind of shaping. I don't do a video, I keep thinking about doing a video podcast, but anyway I don't, and I'm kind of shaping my hands as I've picked up a clip that's on here. I could pick up the hand cream tube that's on here and start to investigate it and there's something very powerful about handling things and thinking about the materials, the malleability of the tube for the hand cream, the fact that the cap on it is quite and the top of it is quite rigid why would that be? And about the way it's joined and how that might be done through heat, and how that's got multiple functions, because it then punches into it a serial cold, which means it's traceable, and so on and so forth. So we can start thinking about all of all of those things in product analysis. But it's sometimes being more precise and that's the way that what the teacher has to do in thinking about that pedagogical approach.

Alison Hardy: 8:49

But it's not just about the physicality, about handling things. It's about, um, you know, why not look at a system, why not do a role play of a process or a particular thing. So you know, I used to get students to go and stand outside the building where we taught in the city, on the city campus at Nottingham Trent, and to say, just observe people going in through the door. How do they go through the door, how do they use the door, how do they step up to it, how do they hold it, how do they push it? What happens to the door when they let go? What happens when the door, you know, when they push it open, does it stay, and so on? How do people make adjustments? So the impact, those different products, you know, that physicality of a door opening has on its intended users, and what does that teach them to think about? By exploring that form of technology, exploring that form of technology.

Alison Hardy: 9:44

So it's all of that in terms of investigating, disassembling, evaluating, you know, analysing, but thinking about, as a teacher, what is the focus of this analysis? Now, that could lead me on to talking about things like Access FM or Cafe Q, but I'm not going to do that because we're going to start to capture some episodes for a new series of pedagogy in D&T and we're going to look at some of those things in much more detail. So there's not a lot of research on this. There's not a lot of research on the best way of structuring activities. What works, how do they then? I think about product analysis at a later date without your guidance. So if you're doing any of this in a classroom and you're observing some different things, then do let me know and let's talk about how do you plan for exploring technology in society in your lessons and what do you know that works. That has an impact on what the children are learning. Are they learning what you want them to learn? Are they able to take that forward, and how does that build on to their design and technology capability? So I'm always looking forward to hearing from people about what they're doing in their practice.

Alison Hardy: 10:58

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 Speak Pipe, patreon and my website are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.