Teach Secondary Issue 14.2

recover quickly, learn from what happened and then go again. We need students to develop that tenacity, and to perceive failure not as an endpoint, but as just another stage in their design journey. And that can be a difficult thing to teach the average 12-year-old. Also intrinsic to our subject is the need for empathy. We want students to see the world through the eyes of whoever ends up using the object they’re designing: ‘ Howwarm is material I’m using? When it’s picked up, will it feel cold? Does that matter? Howwell will it fit in the user’s hand? ’ Aproblem-solving subject I don’t believe the only object of education should be to prepare students for work, but that’s at least partly what we’re here for. We’re there to give students the skill sets, attributes and knowledge that will allow them to progress to the next stage in their lives – which will include work. Yet inmany schools, there’s often been little correlation between what’s happening in their D&T departments and the larger developments shaping business and industry, so we’ve tried to bring both sides closer together (see ‘Inspired by Industry’). Placing real world industry problems into a wider context that students can work in, and which teachers can integrate into their curriculum backed up by teaching resources, will help us to make D&T into a problem-solving subject, rather than one that’s just about making things. Creating thinkers That said, the act of ‘making’ will always be part of the subject. Those kinaesthetic, hands-on experiences are important, but they don’t have to always be the end product. We can instead prototype on our way towards an end product and build up a flow of ideas – from students’ imaginations to cardboard, to polystyrene, eventually CAD and onwards. Something I often hear is that ‘ The kids like taking something home. ’ Yet we never hear the same thing in, say, physics. Yes, it’s a nice thing to do sometimes, but we can’t allow that to be the sole purpose of our subject. Our purpose should be to create thinkers; people who can look at a problem and identify potential solutions. This change in the nature of what D&T involves is partly why many departments are changing the conception of what a school D&T workshop is. If you’re not actively teaching engineering, then you probably don’t need four full-size lathes, as youmight have had in a traditional workshop 20 years ago. In effect, we’re creating design studios where students can work with a range of materials. Instead of dictating the materials students must use when tasked with the same build project, we’re now presenting problems and asking students to choose the materials best suited to the task at hand. Warmnostalgia When visiting a school in the Humber, I saw how there were plastics in one corner of the room, metals in another, and plenty of cardboard and assorted bits for prototyping. The students were allowed to move around the space, with the teacher acting as a facilitator. We want students to be able to switch easily between using CAD, hand drawing and using a 3D printer, because that’s how industry operates. A company like Joseph Joseph will have a huge area at the centre of their design studio – a messy space full of materials, where designers can essentially experiment and play, and discuss their designs before moving to the next step of the process. We’re also looking at parental perceptions. Often, when parents visit school workshops they’ll smell that wood dust and talk wistfully about how they once made a clock, and this, and that. You’ll hear few people say that they hated the subject, but even that warmnostalgia can cause issues. A parent once told me, “ You need a new smell, because that smell brings me back, not forward. ” I quite like that observation, as it sums up where we are. We need to be looking forward. Yes, we should be informed by what’s ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tony Ryan is chief executive officer of the Design & Technology Association; for more information, visit designtechnology.org.uk INSPIRED BY INDUSTRY We know that professional development is hard to come by in schools at the moment, which is why we’ve launched ‘Inspired by Industry’ – a suite of learning materials aimed at KS3 D&T teachers.We’ve taken difficult design challenges, developed some accompanying support materials, and then invited students to wrap their heads around a problem they’ve been presented with, and see what ideas and suggestions they might have for resolving it. One example saw us working with a design agency that had been set the following brief by Age Concern: ‘ Loneliness among elderly people is a bigger problem than it’s ever been. Design a solution that’s going to help elderly people overcome loneliness. ’ We’ve produced 20 such challenges to date, with a further five to follow soon. You can find more details about Inspired by Industry at inspiredbyindustry.org.uk . gone before, and take those practical skills with us – but we also need to be looking at the skill sets that kids will need to live, thrive and work in a very different environment to that which they would have entered 20 years ago. It’s a long way from making a clock. 61 teachwire.net/secondary S T E M