Social and cultural relevance in approaches to developing designerly well-being: the potential and challenges when learners call the shots in Design and Technology projects

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Stables, Kay. 2013. Social and cultural relevance in approaches to developing designerly well-being: the potential and challenges when learners call the shots in Design and Technology projects. Technology Education for the future: a play on sustainability, pp. 437-446. [Article]

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This paper builds on a position paper presented previously that outlined the concept of designerly well-being and, through reviewing critiques of Design and Technology (D&T) curriculum activities, proposed approaches that would support the concept. This paper describes a pilot study that explored designerly well-being in a situation where learners undertook design challenges in contexts that they saw as having socio-cultural relevance to their own lives. The pilot study explored how teachers structured a D&T ‘enrichment day’ based around the design contexts that 14 year olds express interests in. The interests were identified through a survey based on one used to identify topics of social and cultural relevance for learning in mathematics (the ROSME project). Having identified the interest areas, the teachers planned and enacted the enrichment activity with a cohort of 46 learners. Based on learner evaluation questionnaires and a teacher evaluation interview, the study illustrates how positively the learners responded to taking on ‘big design’ challenges in future-facing scenarios. The study also indicates challenges faced by teachers in planning and managing such activities and the transformative impact the day had on the teachers’ views of approaches to D&T project work.

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Article