Abstract

The hierarchical status of academic disciplines, what design valuable or legitimate knowledge and what should
we teach our children is a topic of much debate. Amidst concerns of an academic decline, tackling the culture
of low expectation and anti-intellectualism, the need to address social justice, and its by-product of cultural
reproduction, is arguably the focus of current education policy.

Set within the UK, this paper presents a critical review of the literature relating to disciplinary knowledge and
teaching and learning regimes influencing design and technology. Specifically, we seek to explore the subcultures which exist between design and technology and its associated curricula counterparts that combine to produce ‘STEM’.Amid our growing concerns for the continued decline of design and technology education within the school curriculum, last year we instigated a programme of research which sought specifically to illuminate stakeholder perspectives from the community about the potential future of design and technology. Building upon aspects of our previous work, which was noted within an earlier blog post on this site, acting as a catalyst, this new line of enquiry was swiftly followed by the instigation of a ‘state of the nation’ national survey by the Design and Technology Association (DATA) and The Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE), and amid this groundswell of support, this renewed interested prompted the Head of Ofsted Amanda Speilman’s public address in support of the subject at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Spielman, 2019). Having presented the initial findings of our research programme at a national (UK based) conference in May, we subsequently published our first phase findings to the International community in Malta at the PATT Conference in June. The paper was very well received and has sparked further debate and, pending publication of the full paper, further work is already in progress.