This
research compares special interest groups’ and students’ rhetoric about the
value of Design & Technology (D&T) in England, specifically in relation
to learning about technology, employment and creative endeavors.
Drawing
upon the Design and Technology Association (D&TA) campaigns and interviews
with students, I identify the values these two ascribe to D&T. These values
will be compared with the values implied in the English National Curriculum for
D&T: the current version (Department of Education, 2013b) and previous iterations
since its inception into the National Curriculum in 1990.
Analysis
of the two groups’ values demonstrates a disparity between the two groups’
views of the value of D&T. Whilst D&TA and students concur on some
values, there are noticeable differences. Generally, students place greater
emphasis on D&T’s value to their everyday lives, future employment, and
personal fulfillment, whereas the D&TA campaigns focus on how D&T
engenders both personal and national economic benefits; creativity is valued by
both groups but in different ways. These
findings imply a discord between them about the contribution D&T makes to
an individual’s education and future life.
By
comparing the values of these two stakeholder groups, who have no direct power
to influence the enactment of government policy (Williams, 2007),
this research provides an insight to some of the potential divergences that may
occur as D&T teachers, who do have the power, interpret the National
Curriculum using D&TA’s materials to advocate the value of D&T to their
students. This research could help other special interest groups explore
how D&T is valued and how they lobby government for future curriculum
change.
The
next stage to this study is to explore how the D&TA’s rhetoric about D&T,
and the values discovered in this study, are enacted in classrooms.
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