Taking ideas on a journey called designing: a model for explaining design drawing to young children

In many ways this paper represents the next stage in my understanding of the way in which we use a medium such as drawing to support the mental process which we call 'designing'. At the Millennium Conference in April 2000 I was just beginning to feel confident enough in the way I see things to say so in public. A year on, the model has become crystallised, simplified and has been tried out on real children. I can now say with confidence 'It works for me'. I am now at the point of wanting to explain it to others and ask 'Would this work for you? Would you give it a try and tell me if it does?'Applying Lakoff and Johnson's ideas in Metaphors We Live By (1980) to the activity of design, I have developed a metaphor to explain the process of using drawing for designing which will make sense to young children. When children begin to realise that drawing can be more than a

Participant research in design and technology education

IDATER 2000 began with Phil Roberts' address on the importance of Participant Research. Speaking from a Primary School perspective in which Design and Technology is being squeezed out by default through constant focus on improving SATs scores, and yet having been engaged in researching children's developing design skills for the past 5 years, this paper presents a personal view of Participant Research. There are two halves to the paper, examining my pursuit of a research paradigm under whose umbrella I could feel comfortable. The first half considers the options. The second discusses the problems, practical and philosophical, faced by would-be teacher researchers within the option most readily available. By sharing my perspectives and experiences as a participant researcher into children's design skills, I hope to be able to contribute to the debate on how to encourage more participants to do research and how their results can contribute to the shared knowledge base about design education

'Little c' creativity and 'big I' innovation within the context of design and technology education

'Little c' creativity and 'big I' innovation within the context of design and technology educatio

Beyond 'draw one and make it' - developing better strategies for the use of drawing for design in Key Stages 1 and 2

There appears to be a mis-match between how real designers use drawing and how design drawing is used by young children in school. Real designers use drawing as an interactive design tool. Many researchers have reported on the inability of young children to see the connection between what they draw and what they are going to make. From my own observations of teaching 5–9 year olds, it became clear that by age of eight, many children were using their drawings to develop ideas. My key question became ‘Why?’ What is it that an 8-year-old understands about the process of modelling by drawing that a 6-year-old does not? This paper summarises my observations and thoughts so far and draws on the insights of those who research communication through language as well as those who research design. My proposition is the centrality of analogy in modelling for design

Why draw anyway? The role of drawing in the child’s design tool box

This paper addresses a series of questions that might well be asked about drawing for designing - Why draw? Why model by drawing? When is drawing appropriate to a design & make task? Why plan on paper anyway? What is involved in using drawing as a tool for designing? Adults do not always draw out what they are going to make, so why should it be seen as important to teach this to children? To what extent can children utilise their drawings as a tool in pursuit or exercise of the skills of designing? Is there an essential skill which they need to have mastered in order to do this effectively, and if so, what is it? In order to answer these questions I have applied them to the work of some of our youngest pupils in order to un-pack some assumptions underlying the process of design drawing. However, this is not a paper about Primary School design and technology - it is an exploration of the use of drawing for designing as highlighted by the difficulties encountered by small children

Beyond knowing how to make it work: the conceptual foundations of designing.

Gilbert Ryle (1949) divided knowledge into “know that” and “know how”, which is neatly appealing to many Design & Technology educators, and like many writers on developing the curriculum, Kahney (1993) made a distinction between declarative knowledge: "verbal knowledge, that is, the kind you get from books, instructions and being told what to do." and procedural knowledge: “In order to achieve skilled performance you need to be able to translate declarative knowledge into actions. A new form of representation, known as procedural knowledge must be established.” (p.91) However, a curriculum that consists simply of information and techniques not only fails to reflect the original intentions of the members of the working party for the creation of the National Curriculum for Design & Technology (1988) but also misses the mark in terms of developing creative and inventive minds. Evidence from cognitive archaeology (e.g. Renfrew, 1994) also suggests that the symbiotic relationship between mind and hand that typifies technological action and innovation was a primary driver within human evolution. Thus designing technology is one of the defining characteristics of our species. Technology education, therefore, should not be seen simply from an instrumentalist viewpoint as a preparation for the world of work but as a preparation for full functionality in human society. The contention within this paper is that if we fill up our curriculum with declarative and procedural knowledge, without acknowledging and encouraging the unique response or the innovative idea, then we will have designed a curriculum that, however hard we try, we will never really succeed in “making it work” for many of our most creative pupils

Questioning the design and technology paradigm

My initial reaction to ‘Questioning the design and technology paradigm’ was a list of questions about the question: 1. Define paradigm 2. Whose paradigm? (question the and paradigm singular) What is the design and technology paradigm? Does a consensual view exist, in the UK? worldwide? Do teachers know what the present paradigm is meant to be? How close is this to political doctrine – the rightness of what we believe? 3. Who is doing the questioning – teachers/implementers or the politically ambitious? 4. Why and in what way is it being questioned? 5. Does it need to be questioned, if it exists? 6. What changes will this lead to? (change overload?) Then the questions I would like to ask: • do we need a consensus view? • is there not strength in diversity? • are there not dangers in an agreed ontology? I definitely want to challenge the one right answer paradigm. I think that what is needed is a clearer idea of what design and technology is, or could become. And this, finally, became the question which I found myself addressing

Designer species: human uniqueness and its educational implications

The purpose of this paper is to build on work presented at the last year’s D&T Association conference, subsequently published in the Association’s Journal, and to further explore the implications of human uniqueness for children’s education in design and technology. The research that underpins this paper and the proposed model of human cognitive processes (Figure.2) is founded on: • Classroom-based research into children’s design drawings (1998-2003). Examples within the paper are taken from this work. • Theoretical investigation into the nature of design and creativity, which has led to conference papers and journal articles (2001-2008). • Interest in insights from cognitive archaeology and the centrality of design capability in human evolution (2007- on-going). Combining insights from cognitive archaeology, design theory and classroom observations, this paper explains the implications of the three core capabilities identified in Figure.2 for the purpose and content of design and technology education. The difference between humans and other species has enabled the purposeful design and construction of a complex physical, social and cultural environment through which we mediate our relationships between each other and the found and made world. This difference impacts directly on the education of the young: not only must they be taught to do what others can already do, but they need to be equipped to be creative designers of their own lives, spaces and relationships both with and within the physical and social world

Graphicacy and Culture: Refocusing on visual learning

I was delighted to be asked to review Xenia Denos’ book, based as it is on the literature review of her Ph.D. thesis for which I was external examiner. In turn, I was honoured to be asked to perform this role, as I had followed with interest and growing admiration the development of Xenia’s research from her first conference presentation onwards. First of all, therefore, I would like to congratulate her on the publication of this book which adds considerably to our knowledge of research into graphicacy and should become essential reading for anyone with a deep interest in the field. This book should be of considerable interest and importance to art educators and to anyone interested in overall child development, as well as to those within the design and technology world