Learning and Teaching Design and Technology: Meeting needs, developing capability

Recent years have seen Technology Education grow and spread across regions, countries and provinces as a subject taught and learnt in mainstream schooling. Within this global growth, a distinct development has been of “Design and Technology” as a unified learning area. This paper will provide a rationale for the linking of Design with Technology within the curriculum, identifying the potential this affords, providing a conceptual framework for learning and teaching and exploring the issues and opportunities this raises for developing effective pedagogical approaches.
Through the paper I will explore reasons why learning Design and Technology is important for individuals and for societies, consider the debates about what needs to be learnt and outline how this learning might take place. Within this I will focus on the value of a capability approach and the importance of learning through doing by engaging in an iterative, responsive process. I will discuss the implications of
this for pedagogical approaches to developing knowledge, skills and understanding, including issues of cognition, learning style and designing style. I will draw particularly on research that has developed our understanding both of the nature of Design and Technological capability and of ways of nurturing this capability through the learning experiences we can provide for all children in general education, at both primary and secondary levels.
Finally, I will explore the pedagogical issues this raises for teacher education, drawing particularly on experience gained through preparing new Design and Technology teachers in my own institution – Goldsmiths, University of London.