Perceptions of lower secondary design and technology teachers about the utilisation of the design process
Dèsirè MalletEdith Cowan University
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Perceptions of lower secondary design and technology teachers about the utilisation of the design processDèsirè MalletEdith Cowan University |
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Designing, making and appraising is a process through which students develop ideas and create imaginative solutions for the learning tasks in which they are engaged. They participate in decisions about what to do, why it should be done, how it should be done, and how what has been done might be improved (Australian Education Council, 1994, p. 4)
Previous research found that the modelling of ideas with both the hands and the mind was highlighted as being an important capability in Design and Technology (Kimbell cited in Marsden & Marsden, 1994). In the interviews, the teachers remarked that they were hoping that their students would use not only the hand but also the mind in solving technological problems. This may suggest that more cognitive skills will be introduced into the subject in the future.
A teacher indicated that the design process introduced the students to a wide range of skills including literacy and communication. The new set of skills would produce cross-curriculum outcomes which would be in accordance with some of the aims of Technology Education proposed by the Australian Education Council (1991 & 1992).
The first component, that is designing, appeared as a perceptible change in an area which has been traditionally oriented towards practical work. However, as the projects proposed to the students were similar to those done in Manual Arts, it is suspected that teachers do not want to move too far from skills and designs which are already familiar subjects to them.
A research phase was considered as fundamental to the design process. Some teachers even found it useful for them to compile infor mation and ideas (from newspapers and magazines) which they used as a 'research bank' for the exploration of ideas. Proper research was viewed as a sine qua non condition for successful design; and, the ability to do research was a competency which teachers wanted their students to master. A participant explained that investigation and research produced a ripple effect on the students. This happened when the students who were initially motivated exerted a positive influence on the less motivated ones during the research process.
Some teachers concentrated on the teaching of strategies like co-operative learning and brainstorming. However, even though these two strategies are proposed as being appropriate for teaching problem-solving techniques (Christensen & Martin, 1992), it is of concern that traditional Manual Arts teachers may not be willing to use these strategies in their learning environments.
One teacher has listed serendipity as one of the ways of solving problem, but it was not clear why the others made no mention of this way of arriving at a solution to a perceived need. Another respondent felt that the teacher's role was to facilitate the students to have strategies to help them to design. Indeed, the notion of the teacher as a facilitator of learning is compatible with the use of a design process and an approach based on student centredness.
The second component (i.e., the making component) was perceived as the raison d' Ítre of Design and Technology and as the core of the DMA approach. It was viewed as an educationally valuable activity. Indeed, this point of view reflects that of Piaget who believed that hands-on activities foster cognitive development (Woolfolk, 1993, p. 31).
On their side, the teachers stressed that the students were proud of the things that they designed and made. They affirmed that these things developed in the students a sense of ownership and pride in creativeness. However, it was of general concern to these teachers that the students often did not complete the work that they had conceived; this appeared as a hard reality for them.
The third component of the DMA approach was the appraising component. The teachers highly valued the educational importance of appraisal because students were learning how to critically analyse their own work. And, they asserted that there was not an exact or single position for the appraising component within a design process. Appraisal or evaluation occurred either at the end or at the beginning, or as an integral part within the other components (i.e., the designing and the making components).
Another salient feature of the design process which emerged from this research was the effect of teaching thinking to students who may not have been exposed to thinking strategies. Finally, the research recorded that the teachers blamed both the teaching institutions and the Education Department for their inefficiencies in devising a proper teachers' training scheme for the teaching of Technology. This has created a situation where teachers felt alienation vis-?-vis this new technological approach.
First encounter with a design process
This research has found that the design process was not a totally new concept
in Western Australia. Yet, the impact of the application of the
design process in the school curriculum was not felt by teachers.
Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain how effective the initial
encounter has been. It is possible that a design process may never
have been implemented in schools.
The resistance to change
The attempts to utilise a design process in school were being
met with resistance in Western Australia. Some teachers were convinced
that there were political moves to phase out the subject. A design
process was mostly a threat to those who have been teaching successfully
using a trade approach for years. The English
encounter with the design process was cited to back arguments
against the use of this process. Critics of the design process
have also been mentioned by Massey (1992), West (1989), Wright
(1994), and Wright R. T. (1993). Certainly, the design process
remains an ambiguous one for the teachers.
The teaching of thinking
This research revealed that the teachers believed that the low
ability students and those who had a short attention span did
not like to think. What appeared to be an open secret may be linked
to the fact that traditionally students in technical subjects
have not been encouraged to think. Consequently, the shift from
a teacher-centred approach to a student-centred approach is not
taking place smoothly. It is felt that, for design process to
be fully implemented, existing teaching methodologies will have
to be radically changed to fit a student-centred type of education.
Relevance of the DMA approach
When a design process was used,
the end product was much more diversified than in traditional
Manual Arts. The teachers were inclined to invest much time and
energy to teach students the concepts of the design process. Nevertheless,
they argued that the design process did not seem to be an easy
concept to teach. In fact, not much is known about what goes on
in the mind of the student who attempts to solve design problems
in technology education. This was a concern for McGirr (1985)
who stressed that students really need strategies to be able to
solve design problems effectively.
Still, the general consensus was that the DMA approach was perceived as being purposeful in view of the fact that it was teaching the students how to think, for the first time. It was also felt that, through the design process, students were learning a new set of skills much more relevant than those offered by the traditional Manual Arts course. The set of skills described by a teacher fits well within the aim of technology education as proposed by the Australian Education Council (1992).
The training of teachers
This research disclosed that a design process was not being taught
in all Western Australian schools because of the inadequacies
in the current pre-service teacher training. In plain terms, it
was felt that most, if not all, of the lecturers at universities
did not have a background either in technology or in the design
process. The fact that a considerable percentage of the Manual
Arts teachers and lecturers came from trade backgrounds was posited
as one of the reasons why certain people found it hard to teach
the process.
It was felt that, even if Manual Arts (or Design and Technology) teachers had the knowledge and skills to solve problems and to do the design process, there was a perceived lack of direction from the Education Department. However, it was a common view that both the design process and Technology were not being properly taught because there were no role models or curriculum change leaders who were prepared to risk change.
The Design and Technology teachers had the tendency to mark work in detail. This tendency was based on a desire to be fair towards all the students and to have a concrete basis for monitoring students throughout the accomplishment of their project. Some teachers linked the rationale for the parcelling of the school project with the monitoring of certain specific objectives. Moreover, by breaking down the total mark of a project into smaller portions, teachers felt that they were achieving a reliable degree of fairness in marking. In fact, these marks served a dual purpose: first, they were used as a basis to justify how assessment was done, and second, they helped to identify where students went wrong in a project.
In using qualitative assessment, teachers made use of professional judgement. This research showed that the teachers believed that it was possible to form comprehensive judgements about the performance of students. The comments made by two teachers corroborate with recent literature on the issue, namely that holistic marking is more reliable than marking each separate component of the design process (Borthwick, 1992, & Williams, 1991). In addition, holistic marking appears to be consistent with the move towards outcome-based education.
The research found that the type of assessment done in Design and Technology had some repercussions on the students. Design and Technology was viewed as a subject where students experimented with materials and made mistakes without being ridiculed or feeling frustrated. Moreover, it was affirmed that in Design and Technology, there was room to patch things and fix mistakes by certain techniques which were not available in subjects like Mathematics or English. Thus, mistakes were transformed into remarkable success. This research also found that Design and Technology teachers placed a particular importance on helping the students to achieve self-esteem and self-confidence and on public recognition of project works done by their students.
Teachers also felt that the bringing home of the product made in the class was a concrete example of what the students were able to achieve positively in their school life. This bringing home of artefacts produced at school formed an accountability link with the parents and the community. Teachers were confident that the artefact would describe to the parents, in a language which was visible to them, what the students actually did at school. In brief, this research matched up the bringing home of artefacts with an unwritten contract between the teacher and the community.
This research has also indicated that the existing selection procedure at schools did not offer much choice to the low-academic ability students. To start with, there were certain academic (or scientific) subjects which were outside their reach. So, the sole alternative was to pick a subject, in this case Design and Technology, whose syllabus was intentionally designed to cater for the needs of these students performing at a lower level.
Learning experiences
In teaching the design process, teachers were faced with many
concerns which included the type of teaching approach to use,
the need to teach students some basic skills, and the availability
of physical resources. The participants were trying different
approaches to expose children to techniques of design and to knowledge
of materials. One of these approaches was the trial of a tri-cycle
arrangement where either a woodwork, metalwork or design teacher
had a group of students for a number of hours every week on a
rotating basis. The main problem generated by this arrangement
was that it was difficult to relate each bit of knowledge in a
natural and harmonious way because each group of students would
have been exposed in a different order to each of these bits of knowledge.
Another approach was the teaching of design as an alteration of one part or more of an existing artefact. In this kind of situation, the teacher designed a piece of work, and the students were allowed to modify it either partly or wholly. One teacher's solution was to teach all the students three different processes and to allow them to use any of these three options in their design. Actually, the teachers concluded that teaching the design process was a real dilemma for they were unsure whether or not to teach design first or to teach psycho-motor skills first.
In general, the teachers felt that students needed a repertoire of skills to be able to start design properly.
Based on what the teachers have shared, it is understood that a non-directional model of a design process is appropriate to lower secondary schools students. This may give them flexibility to start the process at the manufacturing stage for example. And then, they may either go to the ideas generation or the appraisal stage, or to any other stage, depending upon how the class responds to this type of learning experience.
Teachers were also concerned about modelling, the type of material to be used for modelling, and the use of drawing as one form of modelling. However, the real issue is that the modelling of ideas in the mind and the modelling of ideas in reality were viewed by proponents of Technology Education as the cornerstone of capability in Design and Technology (Marsden & Marsden, 1994).
Needs
The participants in this research have
highlighted two major needs, namely the need for suitable curriculum
material and the need to teach students to communicate graphically.
There appears to be an urgent need for curriculum writers who
have a solid background in the subject. And it seemed that, in
general, the teachers have been expecting that the curriculum
material should have been provided to them. However, there were
examples of people (amongst the participants) who were working
on syllabuses and support documents which were suited to their
school and community. It may be expected that more and more teachers
will be involved as curriculum developers in the future.
The views shared by the participants clearly indicate that there is also an urgent need for students to learn how to model their ideas. Teachers affirmed repeatedly that the students were not able to communicate their ideas properly. As far as the design process was concerned, lack of graphical skills prevented the students from explaining their problem-solving procedures in a clear manner. Therefore, it was hard to assess their work appropriately. When this issue is solved, it i s expected that students will have acquired an essential tool towards technological capability.
Technology Curriculum
There was a perceived
suspicion amongst teachers that the design process has been included
in the Technology and Enterprise Learning area as an attempt to
link some mismatched subjects together. There was concern that
there existed no rationale for the inclusion of a design process
in some subjects which had no relation to Technology.
The main argument in a teacher's statement was that the design process would not transform any subject automatically into a technological one. The reason given was that the design process is but a part of Technology. The point made by that teacher may be construed as a suggestion that Technology (and not the design process) should be at the foreground of the teaching of technological capability in school. There appears to be a need for the Education Department to make clear its position concerning Technology Education.
There is concern that moves by the educational authorities to introduce the design process as a central element to Technology Education are generating more problems than solving existing ones. One of the underlying causes is that the teachers themselves are experiencing difficulties in grasping the concept of the design process. The changes occurring in the school curriculum, as far as Design and Technology is concerned, are creating apprehension. Some teachers seem to be afraid of losing their jobs, as their trade background expertise may become increasingly irrelevant within the new learning area of Technology and Enterprise.
This research found that a design process is being used in an environment which is structurally inappropriate to the teaching methodologies suggested by Christensen & Martin (1992) or Williams (1987 & 1991). For example, in using a design process, students should be given the opportunity to use, in a safe way, any material they want to include in their design. But, this is not the case. In practice, the teachers are still using, in most cases, an approach based on limited materials.
Also, this research noted that the method used to assess students' work was sometimes in contradiction with the philosophy of Technology Education itself. For example, the literature on the issue proposes holistic marking as an alternative to the current method, but, for different reasons, the teachers find it better to rely more on the breaking down of marks than on their professional judgement to assess students.
The literature suggests that the current trends in Technology Education are oriented towards a student-centred learning approach with the role of the teacher one of a facilitator of learning (Christensen & Martin, 1992; Williams, 1993). However, this research shows that the transition from a teacher-centred approach to a student-centred approach is being made with much difficulty. There is a perceived fear on the side of the teachers that their expertise will be lost and that the students will lack manipulative skills if emphasis is placed on process instead of on the product.
This research also concludes that students have preconceived ideas about the nature of Design and Technology. The simplistic view that Design and Technology is only about the development of the psycho-motor domain seems to be still ingrained in the mind of students and their parents. Further studies are needed to understand what could be done to market Technology not only to teachers but also to the students and to the community at large.
All in all, this research has shown that greater focus should be given to the underlying methodology of the design process. Lack of curriculum materials, role models and uncertainty as to the future of the Technology and Enterprise Student Outcome Statements are all factors relevant to the teachers in this study, and significant to their concerns when implementing the design process with their Technology students.
Finally, as this research limited itself to only seven lower secondary school teachers it may not be possible to generalise the findings to all the Western Australian teachers who may be using a design process in Design and Technology. However, the views shared by the participants are valuable ones, as these views may reflect not only the individual perceptions but also, in some instances, a common feeling about some current issues in education in Western Australia.
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| Author: Dèsirè Mallet, Edith Cowan University, d.mallet@cowan.edu.au
Please cite as: Mallet, D. (1996). Perceptions of lower secondary design and technology teachers about the utilisation of the design process. Proceedings Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Forum 1996. http://www.waier.org.au/forums/1996/mallet.html |