This paper explores how literature in which socio-cultural
theory is applied to learning (John-Steiner, 1985; John-Steiner,
2000; Vygotsky, 1978) can be used to frame a study of
designerly activity in a secondary design and technology
classroom. Having established the theoretical underpinnings of
the study, the paper goes on to develop an appropriate
research question, methodology and analytical framework, all
of which are justified against the theoretical perspective. The
paper concludes by explaining how the approach could be
applied to studies in other areas of the curriculum

Donna Trebell (7151963)

English

Loughborough University Institutional Repository

   This item was submitted to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository by the author and is made available under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions.      For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/  91University of Wolverhampton, Telford Campus, 4,5,6 July 2007AbstractThis paper explores how literature in which socio-culturaltheory is applied to learning (John-Steiner, 1985; John-Steiner,2000; Vygotsky, 1978) can be used to frame a study ofdesignerly activity in a secondary design and technologyclassroom. Having established the theoretical underpinnings ofthe study, the paper goes on to develop an appropriateresearch question, methodology and analytical framework, allof which are justified against the theoretical perspective. Thepaper concludes by explaining how the approach could beapplied to studies in other areas of the curriculum.Keywordssocial constructivism, socially, culturally, designerly, interaction,collaborative learningIntroductionThe aim of this paper is to show how literature in which socio-cultural theory is applied to learning (John-Steiner, 1985; John-Steiner, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978) can be used to frame a studyof designerly activity in a secondary design and technologyclassroom.To achieve this aim the paper is divided into three parts. Thefirst part will consider theories of learning that promote theidea that understanding is constructed socially and culturally(John-Steiner, 1985; John-Steiner, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978). Thesecond part describes exactly what will be investigated duringthe research project. The third part will consider the theoriesdrawn from the relevant literature that will be used to analysethe data collected during the study. The conclusion will outlinethe emerging analytical assumptions established as a result ofthe literature review and explain how the approach could beapplied to studies in other areas of the curriculum.Theories of learning that promote the idea that understanding is constructed socially andculturallyIn educational theory a constructivist approach to learning asadvocated by Piaget (1950), focuses exclusively on themeaning making of the individual mind. In my view and that ofothers (Hamilton, 2003; Hamilton, 2004; Hennessy & Murphy,1999; Murphy & Hennessy, 2001) the nature of designingwithin the design and technology classroom is a social activitydrawing on interaction between pupil/pupil and pupil/teacher.As such it moves beyond constructivism to socialconstructivism which depends on a view of education thatplaces language and interaction at the heart of the learningprocess. Previous studies, (Murphy & Hennessy, 2001) haveshown that pupils seek opportunities to interact with peerseven when these are not made explicit by the pedagogicstance adopted by the teacher. This view of learning as asocially mediated activity draws on the work of Vygotsky (1978:90), who believed that “learning awakens a variety of internaldevelopment processes that are able to operate only when thechild is interacting with people in his environment and in co-operation with peers”.Throughout this study, I will rely on Vygotsky’s culturalhistorical ideas that creative activities (e.g. designing) aresocial, and that thinking is not confined to the individualbrain/mind. In this context pupils are co-constructing theirknowledge and meaning making (Hamilton, 2003). John-Steiner (2000:40), clarifies this point further by explaining thatin partnerships as in the case of collaborative designing, ‘webroaden, refine, change, and rediscover our individualpossibilities’. Generative ideas emerge from joint thinking andsignificant conversations, as in those which take place whenthe pedagogic stance of the teacher supports collaborativeenquiry with the interdependence of thinking leading to theco-construction of knowledge. John-Steiner (2000) highlights through examples such asEinstein’s preference for visual and kinaesthetic modes ofthinking, Bohr’s reliance on thinking through words (verbalcognition) and Heisenberg’s mathematical expression ofthought processes that individuals favour different modes ofcognition and that the collective contributions of divergentthinkers can add value to creative development as contributorsdraw on their ‘complimentarity of skills’ (John-Steiner, 2000). The interdependence of socio-cultural contexts and individualphysical and mental development on the one hand, and theanalysis of meaning and the ways it develops in human socialinteraction on the other, are the core of Vygotskys’ theoreticalA Literature Review in Search of an AppropriateTheoretical Perspective to Frame a Study of DesignerlyActivity in Secondary Design and TechnologyDonna Trebell, University of Greenwich (EdD student)92The Design and Technology Association Education & International Research Conference 2007framework. Vygotsky (1978) posed questions such as: (a)What are the children doing? (b) How are they to satisfy taskdemands? In this research study, I will look closely at whatpupils (and their teacher) do and say when they are designingand how the outcomes of the pupil’s designing develops inorder to answer the following research question: What are thefeatures of the classroom interactions that support pupil’sdesign activity? In my theoretical framework, based on Vygotsky’s work thedevelopment of effective designerly activity is seen as occurringfirst in the shared activities of individuals, particularly betweenyoung and mature designers i.e. the pupil and their teacher, inturn this is transformed into inner understanding and furtherinto designerly thinking. Young designers appropriate sociallyelaborated symbol systems. In a designerly context this wouldinclude relevant dialogue, the use of scaffolded sketchingwhere the act of sketching becomes the centrepiece ofdesignerly conversation with sketching used as a tool todevelop a mutually appropriated concept, or as Schön (1983:78) puts it ‘a conversation with the materials of a situation’through the iterative development of the design idea. Individualand social designerly processes are unified through dialecticalsynthesis, frequently referred to as the ‘zone of proximaldevelopment’ (Vygotsky, 1978; 1981; 1986).According to Vygotsky (1978; 1981; 1986), all specificallyhuman mental processes (so-called higher mental processes)are mediated by psychological tools such as language, signs,symbols. For instance, when designing collaboratively verbaland visual discourse between individuals, particularlyinexperienced and experienced speakers, is transformed intoinner speech and further into designerly thinking and externaldesignerly activity thus producing (building on Vygotskys’ theoryof the zone of proximal development) what could be termedas the zone of designerly proximal development. A description of the proposed Study ofDesignerly activity in Secondary Design and Technology In recent years Mike Ive (ex HMI subject adviser for design andtechnology) repeatedly used the term ‘‘neat nonsense’’ todescribe the undue time and effort given by many pupils (andteachers) to the presentation of design folios at the expense ofcontent. Parker (2003:7) echoed this when he gave hispersonal perspective on the issues based on his experience asboth an Office for Standards in Education Inspector and a LocalEducation Authority advisor:To a large extent, the tail wags the dog. Teachers arereluctant to change their practices when they haveestablished strategies to ensure their A* to C grades eachyear. GCSE coursework assessment procedures discourageteachers from breaking the mould. They seem more typicallyto reward those students who can jump through theassessment hoops rather than encouraging those who areable to show real flare and imagination. The development ofcreativity in students, the opportunity for them to proposeimaginative solutions, take risks, be intuitive, inventive, andinnovative in their work, has been sidelined by an approachwhich has become far too mechanistic. This lack of creativity in the design and technology classroomhas been noted by others (Hamilton, 2003; Kimbell, 2000;Spendlove, 2005). The 2002/03 Ofsted subject report,‘Design and technology in secondary schools’ (Office forStandards in Education, 2004), went further by drawingattention to the lack of progression in designing skills.Typically a school would attempt a sequence of designing andmaking assignments during Key Stage 3 (11–14 years) andpupils would expect to be able to take home a product fromeach assignment. However, teachers of design and technologyin England have been challenged to improve the teaching ofthe sub-skills of designing through the introduction of the KeyStage 3 Design and Technology Framework (Department forEducation and Skills, 2004). With the Key Stage 3 Frameworknow in the public domain and design-without-make advocatedas a method of improving designing skills, it is timely to studythis pedagogic approach in order to further inform and supportdevelopments. This approach is a fundamental challenge toexisting pedagogy which traditionally relies on pupils designing,making, testing and evaluating products across a range ofmaterial areas, namely food, textiles, resistant materials andsystems and control. Having acknowledged that the study will be framed by andcontribute to socio-cultural theory, I have been able to make anumber of decisions about the nature of the study. In thisinstance a ‘case study approach bounded by time and focusgroup’ (Cresswell, 1998) will be conducted in a design andtechnology department which runs a design-without-make unitof work for all Year 9 (13/14 year old) pupils. The design-without-make unit is based on Young Foresight (Barlex, 1999).This is a recent design and technology initiative in England. Itchallenges orthodox approaches to teaching design andtechnology which rely on design and make assignments,focussed practical tasks and product analysis exercises in thefollowing ways:1 pupils design but do not make;2 pupils design products and services for the future;3 pupils use new and emerging technologies in their designproposals;93University of Wolverhampton, Telford Campus, 4,5,6 July 20074 pupils write their own design briefs;5 pupils work in groups;6 pupils present their proposals to their peers, teachers andmentors and to adult audiences at innovationconferences.The Young Foresight approach has been chosen as the startingpoint for the unit of work as it advocates the collaborativedevelopment of design ideas. This provides an excellentopportunity to research designerly activity as a sociallymediated process and the social constructivist view of the co-construction of knowledge. Theories drawn from the relevant literature thatwill be used to analyse the dataHaving decided upon the research question: What are thefeatures of the classroom interactions that support pupil’sdesign activity? it is clear that the question calls for an analysisof process and extensive observation, both of which were coreelements of Vygoskys’ analytical framework and will be vitalcomponents of this study. In order to enable the process to beanalysed in-depth video and audio data will be collected froma number of lessons for the duration of the design-without-make unit of work. Extensive analysis of classroom interactionswill be enabled by focussing on the actions of four purposivelysampled pupils and their teacher. The data will be transcribedand placed in a table to facilitate fine grained analysis.Categories of analysis will be derived from a number ofsources. The first source will be the Vygoskian literature andwill include concepts such as scaffolding and mediation. Thereare a great number of different forms of adult mediation, fromthe adult’s presence, which provides the child with a securelearning environment, to encouragement, challenge, andfeedback (Schaffer, 1996). Tharp and Gallimore, (1988) wroteabout such forms of teacher mediation as modelling,contingency management (praise and critique, feedback, andon the other level, cognitive structuring). Fine grained analysisof the video transcripts will move beyond description toexplanation in an attempt to highlight effective forms ofmediation and scaffolding. In addition the data will be analysedin order to discuss how the teacher can establish aneducational environment in which ‘a zone of proximaldevelopment’ Vygotsky (1978; 1981; 1986) can exist, as it isin this environment that learning and development take place.The data will be analysed with a view to ascertaining thefeatures of the ‘learning conversations’ (Hamilton, 2003) whichfacilitate the development of designerly activity in pupils. It isanticipated that open questions and other forms of interactivechallenge will support this development.The second source of categories of analysis will be theconcept of divergent modes of cognition (John-Steiner 2000)including concepts such as visual, mathematical and verbalmodes of cognition.It is anticipated that further categories will be derived from thedata and that these will form part of the analytical frameworkestablished to assist in the deconstruction and interpretation ofthe video data, thus expanding the theoretical frameworkbeyond that of a purely Vygotskian perspective but still framingthe study through socio-cultural theory and particularly as astudy of social constructivism during designerly activity.ConclusionA detailed review of the literature of theories of learning thatpromote the idea that understanding is constructed socially andculturally has led me to conclude that the study of classroominteractions during designerly activity in secondary design andtechnology needs to be conducted in a natural setting i.e. theclassroom, where social interaction is recorded via video andaudio recordings and studied alongside the production of pupils’design work, in order to ascertain the features of the classroominteractions that support pupil’s design activity and which formthe language of design in fledgling designers i.e. pupils inschools. The term ‘fledgling designers’ has been developed inorder to extend the five levels of expertise (Dorst, 2003), whichconsist of ‘novice’, ‘beginner’, ‘competent’, ‘proficient’ and‘expert’ to include a category specifically for pupils in schools,who will be designing without having had to show prior aptitudeand proficiency in the field.The data will be analysed through a socio-cultural lens usingcategories such as scaffolding, mediation and divergent modesof cognition in an attempt to understand more fully the natureof the interactions which take place.This naturalistic approach would be equally effective in anyclassroom setting where pupils are encouraged to draw uponsocial interaction in order to scaffold their learning. Examplesinclude science where pupils work collaboratively onexperiments, art where pupils work collaboratively to producetheir response to a given brief and media studies where pupilsco-construct outcomes such as short films.It must be acknowledged that the focus of this paper is on thetheoretical underpinnings of the proposed study and thatfuture work should be undertaken to establish a wider range ofdata collection methods drawn from theories related to thenature of designing (Cross, 1989; Dorst, 2003; Ericsson andSimon, 1993; Ericsson, 2001; Lawson, 2004). It should alsobe shown how these theories compliment socio-cultural94The Design and Technology Association Education & International Research Conference 2007theories and how they can be used side by side to frame thestudy of classroom interaction during designerly activity.ReferencesBarlex, D. (1999) Young Foresight, London, Young Foresight.Creswell, J. (1998) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design:Choosing among Five Traditions, London, Sage Publications.Cross, N. (1989) Design Methods: Strategies for ProductDesign, New York , John Wiley and Sons.Department for Education and Skills (2004) Key Stage 3National Strategy Foundation Subjects: Design and TechnologyFramework and Training Materials. London, Department forEducation and Skills.Dorst, K. (2003) ‘The problem of design problems’. InExpertise in Design. N. Cross and E. Edmonds (eds), Sydney,Creativity and Cognition Studios Press, (pp. 135-147) Ericsson, K & Simon, H (1993) A Protocol Analysis: VerbalReports as Data, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Ericsson, K. (2001) ‘Attaining excellence through deliberatepractice: insights from the study of expert performance’. In MFerrari (ed.) The Pursuit of Excellence Through Education,Hillside, NJ, USA, Erlbaum, (pp. 21 - 56) Hamilton, J. (2003) ‘Interaction, dialogue and a creative spiritof enquiry’. In E. W. L. Norman & D. Spendlove (Eds.) DesignMatters: DATA International Research Conference 2003.Warwickshire, UK: University of Warwick, 35-44.Hamilton, J. W. (2004) ‘Enhancing learning through dialogueand reasoning within collaborative problem solving’. In E. W. L.Norman, D. Spendlove, P. Grover, & A. Mitchell (Eds.).Creativity and Innovation: DATA International ResearchConference 2004, Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Hallam University,89-101. Hennessy, S. & Murphy, P. (1999) ‘The potential forcollaborative problem solving in design and technology’. TheInternational Journal of Technology and Design Education, 9,1-36.Kimbell, R. (2000) ‘Creativity in Crisis’, The Journal of Designand Technology Education, 5(3), 206–211.John-Steiner, V. (1985) Notebooks of the Mind Explorations ofThinking, Oxford, Oxford University PressJohn-Steiner, V. (2000) Creative Collaboration, Oxford, OxfordUniversity PressLawson, B. (2004) What Designers Know, Oxford, Elsevier LtdMurphy, P. and Hennessy, S (2001) ‘Realising the potential –and lost opportunities – for peer collaboration in a D and Tsetting’, The International Journal of Technology and DesignEducation, 11, 203-237Office for Standards in Education (2004). Design andTechnology in Secondary Schools in Ofsted Subject ReportsSeries, 2002/03 London, UK: The Stationary Office.Parker, J. (2003) Weaknesses revealed. In D. Barlex (Ed.),Creativity in crisis? Design & Technology in KS3 and KS4,London: The Design and Technology Association/NuffieldFoundation, 6–8Piaget, J. (1950) The Psychology of Intelligence, London,Routledge and Kegan PaulSchön, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: HowProfessionals Think in Action. London, Temple SmithSpendlove, D. (2005) ‘Creativity in Education: A Review’,Design and Technology Education: An International Journal,10(2), 9–18.Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1988) Rising Minds to Life:Teaching, Learning and Schooling in Social Context.Cambridge: Cambridge University PressVygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development ofHigher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA, HarvardUniversity PressVygotsky, L.S. (1981) ‘The genesis of higher mental functions’.In J.V. Wertsch (Ed.), The Concept of Activity in SovietPsychology (pp. 144-188). Armonk, NY: SharpeVygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Language (rev. ed).Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

A literature review in search of an appropriate theoretical perspective to frame a study of designerly activity in secondary design and technology

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A literature review in search of an appropriate theoretical perspective to frame a study of designerly activity in secondary design and technology

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