Your Voice, Your Subject: Three Ways to Shape D&T's Future

In this episode, I'm excited to share three brilliant opportunities for you to get involved in research that's shaping the future of design and technology education. First, I'll tell you about the Redesigning Design and Technology project I'm co-leading with Ciaran, Andrew, and Amanda. We've identified 18 contentious questions that divide our community and created a survey where you can share your views on these crucial debates. This research feels particularly timely with England's curriculum and assessment review underway, and I believe teacher voices need to be heard loud and clear in policy discussions.

I'll also discuss the evaluation I'm leading of the Design and Technology Association's Inspired by Industry resources. Working alongside Kay Stables and my colleagues at Nottingham Trent, we're examining how these resources impact pupils' progress in D&T. It's a fantastic opportunity for participating schools to gather rich data about their own practice whilst contributing to sector-wide understanding.

Finally, I'm launching an urgent call for contributors to a new podcast series addressing special educational needs and disabilities in D&T. This is such an under-researched area, yet absolutely vital to our practice. Whether you're facing challenges or have developed innovative approaches, I want to hear from you.

Each of these projects represents a chance to contribute to evidence-based practice in our subject. They're about empowering teachers to shape research rather than simply consuming it. The insights we gather will benefit the entire D&T community.

What conversations about D&T practice do you think we need to be having more openly in our schools and professional networks?

Take part in the Redesigning D&T survey: https://bit.ly/ReDandT_Phase3

Join the evaluation of the Inspired by Industry projects: https://bit.ly/IBIinterest

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to urgent research opportunities
• 3:41 Evaluation of Inspired by Industry resources
• 11:07 Call for SEND teaching experiences
• 16:17 Closing and how to participate

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:06

you're listening to the talking d and t podcast. I'm dr alison hardy, a writer, researcher and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode I share views, news and opinions about dnt. This week I wanted to share with you some opportunities to get involved in some research that I'm co-leading and another piece of research that I'm leading on, and also whether you'd like to come and be involved in a series on the podcast that I'm hoping to get underway quite quickly. So it's quite an urgent call out. But let's first start with the project that I'm co-leading on.

Alison Hardy: 0:45

This is the redesigning design and technology project and I've done a few episodes on this, and Ciaran, Andrew and Amanda have done some episodes on this and I'll put some links to those in the show notes so you can get that background. And what we've been doing is looking at what some of the contentious questions around design and technology that are unanswered, and so we ended up with these 18 questions, these 18 contentious questions, and then we asked people to give us their viewpoint, their answers to those questions, and we've put those together now into a survey. So for each of the 18 questions we've got a number of different choices that people can make to select the one that that fits is. That is their answer. It's a multiple choice quiz, basically, and so that's where we're at at the moment, and so we've got this survey that's open, with the 18 questions and a number of different responses to select from for each of those questions, and so we're doing a call out in a number of different spaces to complete this survey for us, you need to be a design and technology teacher, a current design and technology teacher in England and we think this is really timely, because in England, at the moment, we're going through a curriculum and assessment review, and I've talked about again this previously on the podcast.

Alison Hardy: 2:03

Now, if you're listening from another country whether that's one of the other three nations that make up the United Kingdom or whether that's another nation beyond there hang on right. Hang on, because I think this process that we've gone through is really useful for other schools, other countries. Rather, who would be maybe thinking about curriculum development and how do you address some of these different challenges and debates and the things that people don't agree on. So go back and listen on the other episodes, but where we're at with this one is where we've got these 18 questions. We've got some different options to answer for each question. So multiple choices, I said, and we're hoping to get lots and lots of responses to this from English D&T teachers that are currently practicing that. We can then identify what the majority sits with on those 18 questions, and then our final phase will be okay.

Alison Hardy: 3:01

So how might we design a curriculum for design and technology that fits with that? So let's go back then, to why I think this is timely in England. I think it's timely because we've got this curriculum and assessment review and I have been in conversation with the Department for Education, the policy team around design and technology, about some of the evidence that was collected in the call for evidence. That happened, started happening about a year ago now. I can't share any insights from that, but they were. They were conversations, and they had conversations with other people, um leading in design and technology as well. So I know that later this month that's September 2025, the curriculum and assessment panel are planning to put out a report, which is the responses to the evidence that came from the call for evidence a year ago. That's not just for D&T, that's for all subjects. So I think this research we're doing this redesigning D&T because it's led by teachers and the participants are all teachers, I think if we can get something out, and so in response to that report that comes out later this month so that is about what people like yourselves say about what is important in design and technology I think we've got something that's really powerful there to be sharing with the Department for Education and the panel about what teachers in classrooms practising today think the shape of the subject should be. I can't guarantee they'll listen, but I think this is where you need to have a voice, and the more voices we have, the greater chance we have of being listened to. So this isn't the Alison Hardy view of design and technology. That's why Andrew, kieran and Amanda are actually the ones that have done the work on identifying these 18 questions and the responses.

Alison Hardy: 4:55

I've kind of been in the background, almost like as the research assistant and the manager of the project, because the ethics and such I've actioned and led on with the university. So that survey is open already. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you follow me on LinkedIn or Kieran, amanda or Andy, you'll have seen them posting as well, and if you're already on the Archer Exchange Network, then you'll have seen me post about that. So that link is live until the end of October and then we can do some quick analysis and start getting some information out about that. So that's the first thing. So that's a really quick survey. Get on, get it done, get us some feedback, we'll write something, we'll put it together, we'll share it, and we'll share that with a wider audience as well through Archer Exchange.

Alison Hardy: 5:41

So the second thing that I'm involved in is I'm leading on an evaluation of the Inspired by Industry projects at the Design and Technology Association. So Nottingham Trent is being funded to do this evaluation. So we're independent from the association and it's funding us to conduct an evaluation of how schools are using the Inspired by Industry resources available from the Design and Technology Association, but also whether they're having any impact on pupils' progress in D&T. So, and to be really honest, we're struggling to get teachers involved because we're asking for quite a commitment, but I think there's a real possibility here of a game you learning an awful lot and we're going to do some things as part of the research, the evaluation. I think if I was teaching in a school would be something that I would then be taking on to use in my school to help with assessment of design and technology.

Alison Hardy: 6:40

We've got Kay Stables involved as part of the research team and there's myself and Sarah Davis and some other colleagues at the university who are helping with the administration and the data collection. But by having Kay on board, because I wanted to look at what pupils' progress is in design and technology, we're drawing on all of the work from Goldsmiths and the schools that are involved. There'll be some questionnaires, some interviews, interviews with teachers, questionnaires to parents and pupils. This can be really rich data that you can share with your senior leadership team and across your trust if you're involved, and then we're going to be doing um, an hours test, uh, at the beginning of the data collection period and then another hours test at the end. We assess those. As there's no work in terms of teachers that are involved in this and having to mark anything, they get sent back to us and we mark all of that and then we do some more surveys and some more interviews and you end up with some reports for your school. But also the association gets some reports for themselves. That's particularly what they're interested in, so kind of get an assessment of of how these resources are being used and whether they're having an impact.

Alison Hardy: 7:53

So if you're interested in being involved, you need to be a secondary school in England a state secondary school in England because we're going to be reporting to Department for Education and so it's aligned with the national curriculum. That's not to say that if you're outside England or you're a private school that you cannot be using the Inspired by Industry, but for this evaluation project. That's our inclusion criteria is a state secondary school in England and then, finally, you have to be a school that is using one of the Inspired by Industry projects in some way this school year that's 2025-2026. And you can be using it to whatever degree you like. You can be using it as it is from the association or you can be modifying, modifying it, taking parts of it and building it into something that's slightly different. We know the projects have been downloaded. A lot we can. We know that the association's got all the data on that, so we know they're in use, but we're struggling to find schools who's going to come and get involved in this project.

Alison Hardy: 9:03

I think it's a really exciting opportunity. I know if I was teaching at the time you know when I was teaching and I was using these projects to be involved in something like this would be really exciting because you're going to get to meet with the other schools. We'll be creating meetings where you can meet and talk. What we'd really like is there to be one class teacher in the school involved. If you've got another one who's really interested in research to actually come and help us design some parts of the research tools, do the data collection and get involved in the analysis. So if you're thinking about doing a master's or you're a research lead in your school in design and technology, this is a really exciting place for you to be involved because you can be working with three experienced researchers myself, sarah and Kay.

Alison Hardy: 9:49

You won't be collecting any data. If you're the research teacher in your school, you won't be collecting it about your school. You'll be collecting it about another school. But we really do, we could. You can only get involved in that role if you're a class. If you've already got a class teacher from your school who's teaching one of the inspired by industry projects to a key stage three class okay, because we want to track that class before, during and after them doing your interpretation of the inspired by industry resources okay. So again, drop me an email links in the show notes for you to sign up, there'll be a survey for you to um where we get your permissions. It's long-winded. It has to be because of the ethics these things can scare people off, but please don't be because we're going to be collecting uh data about pupils. We've got to have an awful lot of protocols and um checks in place to make sure everything's kept safe and secure. So we need to know things are. We need to be telling you what we're doing and making sure you're aware of what we're doing before you get involved. I think that's a really exciting project, um to get involved in and and to be a participant in. So there's that one right. So that's two opportunities. So the third opportunity.

Alison Hardy: 11:07

So I did earlier in the year and I didn't finish it. I got sidetracked, I think, probably with my garden. I did earlier in the year a series on what does the research say about good D&T Okay, and I looked at what the curriculum intention was according to the research, what the knowledge structure is according to the research, and so on and so forth through to pedagogy. It's been really interesting to see which episodes have been downloaded. A lot, but one of the gaps that is existing in design and technology research that I really struggle to find this perspective. There's an awful lot about mainstream, but there's very little, very, very little about teaching pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in design and technology. I think that's, for all sorts of reasons, okay. So what I'm trying to do is, rather than take the tack of like throwing my hands up in the air and going right, there's no research about it, so I can't write about it, we can't talk about it, it's actually to say to people come on, let's have a conversation, so, and come on the podcast and have a conversation, let's talk about what there isn't there and what we do know, and let's talk about some of the practices and let's critique them. You know, if you're a teacher, let's come and have a conversation with me about what you do and why you do it like that. And and let's let's explore how that works. And I think that would be really rich for other people to listen to who may be new into teaching or have moved schools, and so they might have more children in their lessons with special educational needs and difficulties and disabilities that they might not have had before.

Alison Hardy: 12:51

Earlier in the year I did a half-day consultancy. It was a half-day training up in Leeds with a group of lovely D&T teachers from the Leeds area and I had the pleasure of meeting a number of them. I did record a fantastic little video with one of them about assessment and that was fantastic. But I also met two or three of them who work in special schools. One of them worked in a SEMH program, so social, emotional, mental health school. Now my mind has gone completely blank, which is really embarrassing because I've recorded a podcast with her, okay, and I got to come and talk about what she does in her classroom and how she does it and how she manages it. Nicola Brown, I found her name. So sorry, nicola, that I forgot your name. So I've got Nicola. I'm hoping to get one of her colleagues kind of keep sort of sending gentle emails to say can we get a date booked? I've also got in the diary one of her senior leaders, paul Quinn, to come and talk about what he did as a senior leader to ensure there was a space, a classroom, in the room for teaching in the school for teaching D&T. So I've got some of those things lined up.

Alison Hardy: 14:17

I'm trying to persuade one of the authors for the fifth edition of the Learning to Teach Design and Technology book, which I'm currently working on, who's doing a chapter for me about inclusion in D&T. I'm trying to get her to come on the podcast to come and talk about what she's exploring in that chapter. But this is such an underdeveloped or under-researched or under-talked about part of design and technology that I think it's really important. And so I'm looking for D&T teachers who are facing challenges and don't know, don't know what to do, or have addressed challenges and design things and develop things that they want to come and talk about and we can share, just to kind of get that ball rolling, to start those conversations. So if that's you, or even if you just want to go what you mean, alison, what would that involve then just drop me an email and if you listen to the podcast, you'll know that they're a conversation. Yeah, sometimes they're going to give you a hard time, but that's because I'm trying to push underneath a little bit just to help us unpick a little bit about why we make the decisions we do. So I'm really excited about that and I think that's just such a gap.

Alison Hardy: 15:32

Louise Davis did a fantastic book, but it's quite a long time ago now, about teaching in secondary schools. Actually I don't think it was just for secondary schools teaching children with special educational needs and disabilities. But you know, life has moved on, classrooms have moved on and let's talk, let's share those ideas, let's share those issues and let's see if we can develop between us a body of knowledge that might get some research going. I'm not going to do it. I've kind of got I'm up to capacity. But I'm always about empowering people to think about what they're doing, to learn from each other and let's get some good research going in this area, as ever. Thanks for listening.

Alison Hardy: 16:17

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