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Fostering Creativity through Design and Technology Education
Full text linkThe challenges faced by contemporary societies, together with the on-going change characterizing these societies, reveal the need for citizens who are able to think differently and adapt what is already known to new, unknown situations (Cropley, A., 2011). This ensures that change is pro-actively managed. Education plays an important role in supporting active citizenship (Apple, 2013), where a methodology that promotes creativity ensures the effectiveness of pluralism in democratic societies. Teachers, however, are faced with dilemmas, having to compromise between the requirements for creativity and the demands of education systems (Atkinson, 2000; Runco, 2014a). Design and Technology Education has a potential role in addressing these dilemmas, due to the authenticity afforded and the potential of design practice to foster the metacognition required for creativity (Christiaans & Venselaar, 2005a). This paper presents the research conducted to build a toolkit for secondary school Design and Technology Educators, intended to capitalize on this potential. It was developed following an exploration process aimed at identifying a pedagogy that facilitates the fostering of creative mindsets through the subject. This process consisted of interviews with Design and Technology teachers to understand creativity in the local classroom, in addition to a literature review. The toolkit was then evaluated through interviews with other Design and Technology teachers. The underlying philosophy of the toolkit is based on the 4P framework (Rhodes, 1961) – Person, Process, Product, and Press – to address creativity holistically, with the creative Person as its long-term goal. This is embodied through the design process at the core of the toolkit, facilitated using the spiral curriculum (Bruner, 1977) and specific design tools. The evaluation of the toolkit shows that it can support high-level thinking required for creativity, confirming the role of Design and Technology Education in preparing present and future generations for the society they design and live in
Using movie-making to visualise pre-service teachers\u27 perceptions of technology
Full text linkThis study uses a Bourdieusian framework to determine pre-service teachers\u27 perceptions of technology before their engagement in any formal coursework of a technology education teachers preparation program. The analysis focuses on movies depicting three states of technological capital, revealing a duality between movie narratives and written reflections. These movies underscore a Western-centric perspective on technology, ethics, and social understanding. One film triggered self-awareness among students regarding smartphone use, demonstrating the potential of movie-making for prompting personal reflection. The study emphasises experiential learning through stop-motion movie creation. Moreover, aesthetics emerges as an avenue for students to articulate technological viewpoints, transcending conventional instructional methods. Aesthetic processes unveiled students\u27 technological capital, although effective transformation centres on pedagogical adaptation. The study\u27s methodological integration of storyboards and reflective components gives insights into students\u27 evolving knowledge. The discussion shed light on technology education within the STEAM classroom. Findings show that by embracing students\u27 perceptions and facilitating knowledge expression, educators can contribute to exploring technology\u27s multifaceted role in the educational landscape
Engaging object agency: new ways of design learning and being for young people in the museum
Full text linkThis research investigates object intra-actions with young people in the design museum. Agency in relation to learning is under-researched in museum studies, and this is especially lacking in research that focuses on learning during secondary school visits to design museums. Further exploring agency through religious-political dimensions, another under-researched area is Christian and Christian-colonial influences in museology broadly, and in museum learning in particular. These influences are pertinent to learner and object agency due to their historical proscription of certain values and structures to knowledge and experience of the design object and its representations in the museum, and as such they co-constitute the entanglement of this research. The research aims to disrupt the status quo by using a design and new materialist methodological approach to make sense of and, where possible, make visible intra-actions between objects within this entanglement.
This paper is intended as a discussion piece which examines the historically imbued nature of design learning for young people in school visits to the museum, sets out the framework-methodology and frames a number of key questions to be explored further through the conference presentation. Agential realism underpins the theoretical-methodological framework which also supports my position as learner-researcher, and this positioning is further enhanced by my professional experience in museums, schools and the university. The research identifies alternative pedagogies for both schools and museums that are co-located between learners and museums as entangled producers of knowledge. This is a radical re-imagining of design pedagogies in museums and classrooms that contributes to the multi-stakeholder dialogue on decolonising methodologies within design education
Teaching K-8 Children about the Internet Will Be Difficult: Preliminary Findings from a Mixed-Method Study
No full textIn the contemporary society, children need to become competent internet users. Previous studies suggested that in order to achieve this goal, it helps if children understand basics of how internet works. However, these studies also indicated that children’s knowledge about internet’s functioning is patchy. Furthermore, children possess many misconceptions and existing research does not examine how to boost their understanding of the internet’s functioning. Here, we present a mixed-method study, in which children (Grade 4, 6, 8; N = 50 + 50 + 38): a) were interviewed about how the internet works; b) half of them (random assignment) was explained this topic during a 50-min-long 1:1 tutoring session (with activating tasks); c) were interviewed again four months later. The interviews and the teaching session examined/promoted understanding of the following concepts: servers, wifi routers, network routers, wireless vs. wire connection, storage of data on the internet, digital traces, and cookies; among others. The interviews are now being analysed through thematic and frequency analyses. Preliminary findings corroborate previous findings about misconceptions and are consistent with ‘knowledge in pieces’ theories of knowledge representations. Typical reasoning among children about the internet structure includes satellites and central computers/towers. Only expert children know about distributed, server-like storage. Children understand the internet primarily through their personal experiences, only most knowledgeable children view it as a global network with a complex internal, but only vaguely understood, structure. The teaching session promoted understanding in short term, but much less so in a long term. Four months later, only few children retained knowledge about network routers, some about servers. Children tended to return to their prior misconceptions and their post-understanding remained patchy. Some held both prior misconceptions and contradictory new ideas. Altogether, our results suggest that teaching K-8 children about the internet functioning will be challenging and specific approaches, such as those capitalizing on activating children’s prior knowledge, will be required
Teaching Variables and Functions at the Secondary Level in a STEM Context
Full text linkSTEM education is becoming more popular at the primary and secondary levels in many curricula around the world. Effective instructional STEM activities and design methods are required to ensure that students’ and teachers’ needs are being met. One potential method is the Technology Design Process (TDP): a methodology that stresses the importance of creativity, collaboration and being open to adjustments and compromises.
This article reports on a case study that focused on the use of TDP to design and develop teaching-learning materials based on pendulum experiments to introduce variables and functions in mathematical context at the secondary level. The five iterative stages of TDP were integrated into the development of the course materials. Data was collected from 20 high school students who participated in a STEM activity. Both pre- and post-questionnaires were administered to the students. Additionally, a working document was used to assess the students\u27 understanding of abstract concepts and the TDP.
The results indicate that TDP-centred activities effectively promote critical thinking, encourage questioning, and facilitate meaningful exploration of abstract concepts
Students’ perception about mechanical stress and what is most important for learning, during a practical task, using digital interactive lab description.
Full text linkThis study investigated student’s knowledge about mechanical stress using material created by the authors of this text. The material was an interactive lab description which can be used as an aid for teachers when teaching solid mechanics. During the studies in upper secondary school in Sweden, students at the technology programme take a general introductory course in mechanics. The participants consisted of four classes from one school in Sweden. They answered a questionnaire before and after the solid mechanics task, 85 out of 107 students answered both questionnaires. A thematic analysis was applied on the material, resulting in 6 groups based on the students’ previous knowledge and how much they have learned. To find correlations between the different groups a Oneway Anova analysis with multiple comparison post hoc test was performed. No significant differences were found between groups and how the students rated importance of their preparation, lab description, interactive links, formula book, course book, the teacher or execution of the lab. Significant differences between groups and class, and between the class and the importance of the teacher were found. The teachers’ role was most important of all the categories in all classes while the lowest was the course book and the digital links. This study showed that the teacher was important for the students’ perception of solid mechanics during this lab and that the interactive lab description played less roll
Unveiling Biases: An Exploration of ChatGPT-3.5-generated ‘Technology Stories’
Full text linkA technology that is increasingly affecting our daily lives is artificial intelligence (AI). An example of such a technology is ChatGPT-3.5, which has received a lot of attention recently. ChatGPT-3.5 is a text generator that is developed on a large number of existing texts. Currently, there is a debate about negative consequences in education, for example, if students let the chatbot write texts for them. In this study, however, our point of departure is on how ChatGPT-3.5 and storytelling can be used as a tool in teacher education to develop students’ critical thinking in relation to technology.
A main objective of technology as a school subject is to prepare pupils to act in a technology-intensive world, which includes critical thinking about technology and its impact on individuals, society, and nature. However, a critical aspect of technology education is that it easily becomes an unreflective doing without a meaningful context. A way to circumventing this problem is to use storytelling in technology teaching.
This is a pre-study for a coming project aiming to let teacher students create stories using ChatGPT-3.5 and then critically analyse the technological content in the stories. In this pre-study, we gave ChatGPT-3.5 the instruction to generate ten shorter stories for children with a focus on technology. A qualitative content analysis shows that there are several dominant themes within the stories, and that the chatbot presents a view of technology that is mainly positive and without any critical reflection on its effects on individuals, nature and society. Furthermore, in the stories, high-tech male coded technology is a dominating theme. The pre-study highlights the importance of critical thinking and reflections when using AI tools in technology teacher education. It also indicates that stories generated by a chatbot can be a steppingstone to visualise technology bias and contribute to developing teacher students’ critical gaze
All you wanted to know about D&T but were afraid to ask?
Full text linkTorben Steeg and Hilda Beaumont have written a short book for design & technology teachers both in England and abroad; to support heads of department in particular although we expect the book to be useful to teachers in training. The publisher is Routledge, and the title is Design and Technology in your School: Principles for Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment. In writing this book we have called on the expertise of those who have significantly influenced the developing nature of the subject by inviting them to be critical friends of our writing and in some cases by contributing short pieces themselves. As a result, the content was not restricted to the thoughts of Torben and Hilda but was able to include voices from across the community of practice. This paper will describe the structure of the book, the devices used to support active engagement with the text, the contribution of critical friends and Thought Pieces, and the dealing with contentious issues. In the Concluding Remarks the paper discusses the place of the book in subject’s current state of uncertainty
The Adaptive Subject Pedagogy Model : Understanding Pre-service teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in Design and Technology Education
No full textOur presentation discusses the current phase of a practitioner enquiry project to explore ways of supporting undergraduate technology education ITE students to inform their classroom practice with theory, research, and academic knowledge. The practitioner enquiry centres on our work in teacher education with students using a model created by Morrison-Love to scaffold the development of pedagogic reasoning: the Adaptive Subject Pedagogy Model (ASPM). In the first phases of our project, we explored students’ challenges in relating theory to practice and developing pedagogic reasoning using focus groups with students and analysis of course assignments. Continued use of the model showed students improving in their connections across knowledges, but many still struggle with the development of coherent evidence-led pedagogic reasoning. Here, we will present findings from our analysis of a series of mediated interviews we undertook with students to understand more about how they were reasoning through engagement with the ASPM. During the interviews, student submissions were used as a mediating artefact to scaffold questioning and discussion. The submissions each capture one full cycle of the ASPM for a topic chosen by that student and an associated lesson plan in a form of their choosing. Use of student submissions in this way provided a tangible focus to help reveal more of the students underlying thinking. Here, we will discuss insights about the knowledges drawn upon, considerations and decisions made by students in the process of creating their own subject pedagogy and what this means for our own practice as teacher educators. We will conclude by reflecting more broadly about what our evidence to date about the ASPM suggests given that, despite our best efforts, some students still struggle to create pedagogically reasoned lesson plans. We discuss implications for future work with ASPM and for our own practice as teacher educators
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PATT40 (LJMU)Biomolecular Research Reports (BRR) (LJM...Design and Technology Education (LJMU)BLResearchDay (LJMU)Journal of Living Labs (LJMU)Journal of Natural Products Discovery (L...Journal of Social Media for Learning (LJ...Student Law Journal (LJMU)PRISM (LJMU)Public Health Institute Journal (LJMU)SPARK (LJMU)Student Experience Proceedings (LJMU)Transformation in Education (LJMU)Innovations in Practice (LJMU)Links to Health and Social Care (LJMU)
PATT40 (LJMU)Biomolecular Research Reports (BRR) (LJM...Design and Technology Education (LJMU)BLResearchDay (LJMU)Journal of Living Labs (LJMU)Journal of Natural Products Discovery (L...Journal of Social Media for Learning (LJ...Student Law Journal (LJMU)PRISM (LJMU)Public Health Institute Journal (LJMU)SPARK (LJMU)Student Experience Proceedings (LJMU)Transformation in Education (LJMU)Innovations in Practice (LJMU)Links to Health and Social Care (LJMU)Access Repository Dashboard
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