Consistency in design and technology 

Consistency in design and technology. All right, we’re going to look at some aspects of it here, and we’re going to race through this. Can we achieve consistency? We’ve got eight areas to look at. We tried to take some out, but they’re all really important.

Let’s start with the name. Really quickly: I already went through 5. There were 127 job ads on TES last week, I went through them. Which is the most common label for design and technology? Just do it in your heads. The most common label is “design technology”, which is no surprise, in 27% of the job adverts. Now think about jobs with a food specialism. What’s the most common label for those on TES? It’s quite a nice barometer, isn’t it? It’s food technology, of course. TES doesn’t help, because one of its drop-downs still says “food technology”.

So across all of them, how many different labels were used on TES for design and technology? It was 23. Absolutely mad. Is this normal? No, it’s not. I looked at art. I’ve called it art, not art and design, so I’ve got that wrong already. There were three to five unique labels. Computing, because of the ICT hangover, has five to eight. But we’ve got 23. That’s insane, isn’t it? So we need to look at it. Here’s the range of ways we describe our subject area, so obviously there’s a bit of inconsistency there, and that’s our first job: one name.

Selina:

We all need to agree on the purpose of D&T. Why are we in those classrooms? I did a quick Google search of secondary schools, and you can see there’s a wide range and we are doing everything from being creative to engineering, practical making, problem solving to technological literacy. I don't know, we don't know. We need to figure this out. So, the purpose of the subject often determines what is taught and how.

Sam:

Do we all speak the same language as well? Let’s take a little trip through one aspect of design and technology: material properties, which are pretty important. At Key Stage 1, we’re talking about characteristics. At Key Stage 2, we talk about functional properties and aesthetic qualities. At Key Stage 3, we’re talking about properties. Now we're into Key Stage 4, we’re talking about physical properties, working properties, characteristic properties and chemical properties. So already you can see this is quite a complex area, isn’t it?

Then look at the exam boards: some define physical properties and some don’t, some reference specific materials, some define working properties and some don’t. Some don’t use “characteristics”, and some use it as an overarching headline for different properties. Then let's try and map these across each exam board, you can see again lots of inconsistencies and lots of different ways of doing things. This touches on what we talked about at the beginning, about how we all talk to each other. And that’s just one area where we're talking about vocabulary. A shared vocabulary helps progression, improves resource sharing and also strengthens our identity if we can have some consistency across that.

Selina:

We've got different Key Stage frameworks from 1, all the way to 2 and 3. We've got different project contents, we've got different levels of CAD and CAM in schools and different emphasis on areas like sustainability. Now we all come to GCSE and pupils arrive with very different experiences, knowledge and skills, so we, as teachers, have to bridge those gaps. Bridging prior learning gaps creates an additional challenge in teaching and can also affect pupil confidence and engagement. A child will compare themselves to another child in the room and think, “They have more experience than I have,” and that can be quite difficult.

Sam:

Next one: are pupils experiencing D&T in the same way? Probably not. We have lots of different ways of doing it: carousels, full academic years, and in primary, I’ve not been in one primary school in the last two years that does it in the same way. There’s theory and practical. We don’t like talking about that, but it’s another way of doing it. We have clean workshops now, often classrooms, versus traditional workshops. And then there are projects where everybody makes one thing after another and gets the same outcome at the end, versus design challenges: “Do what you want, here are all the resources in the world.” Learning is often influenced more by timetables and their structure than by curriculum intent. [gap in captions]

Selina:

As we have some exam boards in the room, a question that we want to ask is why does GCSE D&T vary between exam boards? So, I pulled up a Facebook forum and pulled out some quotes. I've anonymised examples. I have something here about moving from one exam board to another because the content was easier; The NEA is more based on making; We need an honest conversation about what 40 hours work looks like; What tomorrows grading looks like; And the one that stuck out for me was the principal moderator in the top right "everyone cheats". Okay, so exam boards what are we going to do about it? If you do so-and-so exam the grade boundaries are low; and the really contentious one was switch to 3D design, it's tailored to the course and suits students. The perspectives show that the same or similar qualification can look quite different depending on the exam board.

Sam:

Do all teachers have the same expertise? No, and that’s the beautiful thing. We all come from different backgrounds. So we try to get CPD to bring ourselves up to speed in other areas, but that depends on your school, your trust and your region. Then there’s recruitment and retention, which Tony is going to talk about. We’ve got loads of non-specialists, including art specialists, teaching our subject now. Departments can also have very different expertise in different areas. Electronics, CAD/CAM and textiles have all gone off a cliff for some reason. Teachers’ knowledge, confidence and specialisms influence what’s taught and how deeply it’s explored.

Almost there, I promise. 

Selina:

Does every pupil have access to the same opportunities? So, if we look at schools, some schools have multiple new workshops... some have very limited facilities. They have different budgets and often the budget is compared to how many students I can get. and then opportunities, so what's available locally and the difference depending on the region. So people's experience of D&T has been heavily by their school.

Sam:

That’s it, we’re pretty much there. I’ll put these up on screen. We don’t have the answers, but here are some possible ones. Imagine if we had a nationally agreed D&T glossary, so we were all using the same language. I get so jealous when I read a core competencies document. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have something like that for design and technology, some kind of framework? Are we going to have a clear purpose in this new curriculum? Hopefully. There are lots of different things on there that might make our lives a little easier and more consistent.

Selina:

And the final thing to leave you with: the issue is not that we have flexibility. We are so lucky and fortunate that we do. The issue is that we have flexibility before we've established what should be consistent.