Agendas, influences, and capability: Perspectives on practice in design and technology education

To elicit a holistic understanding of teachers’ perceptions of practice an interpretive research methodology (Cohen et al. 2007) was employed. Validity of research instruments and findings have traditionally been viewed as the weakness of such an approach, as the potential for capturing decontextualized data arises due to difficulties in controlling variables. To alleviate this potential, a methodological framework converging on the concept of ecological validity was derived through situating the research instrument in teachers’ enacted practices. The framework utilises the convergent and discriminant techniques of internal construct validity as depicted by (Cohen et al. 2007). Furthermore, a cross-sectional approach spanning the technology subjects across each year of schooling in lower- and higher-secondary Irish education was decided upon. This approach afforded the opportunity to validate findings convergently (Crano et al. 2015, p. 68), though the analysis of teachers’ perceptions in each year of schooling. Previous studies concerning teachers’ perceptions of practice range from small case study approaches (Reinsfield and Williams 2017), to larger studies which employ survey instruments and subsequent focus group interviews (Bruce-Davis et al. 2014). The guiding principle used here is that advocated by Glaser and Strauss (1967), in that data were collected until ‘theoretical saturation’ of the data was deemed to have occurred.

A semi-structured interview was chosen as the sole research tool as in keeping with the ecological nature of the framework, it allowed the interviewer to encourage participants to lead conversation, enabling reflection upon past experiences. An interview protocol was derived from the methodological framework, and triangulation of data was achieved through interview questions pertaining to; the focus of learning activities, the intended learning outcomes prescribed by teachers, and ultimately, the qualities teachers seek to instil or develop in students.

In this study, 15 practicing teachers were interviewed. Participants were selected in order to encompass a diverse variation of geographical and socioeconomic regions in Ireland. The inclusion criterion required participants to be qualified technology teachers, teaching any of the technology education subjects at both lower- and higher-secondary education at the time the study was conducted. All participants were male, ranging in teaching experience from one to 31 years (Mean = 14.1 and SD = 9.4), and ranging in age from 26 to 53 years (Mean = 37.1 and SD = 8.6). A detailed description of participant demographic information is provided in Table 1.

Prior to engaging with the interview, participants were asked to select one learning activity from each of the five compulsory years of schooling to be used as the basis for discussion. Each interview followed the procedures advocated by Cohen et al. (2007). In addition to scripted questions, probing questions were used to further encourage participants to articulate their perceptions of practice. Interviews ranged in duration from 30 to 55 min. Where possible, interviews were conducted on-site (n = 12) at the school in which the participant taught, affording participants the opportunity to use physical artefacts or resources relevant to the activities being discussed. In the instances where this was not possible a phone interview (n = 3) was undertaken where descriptions of the projects were provided by participants. Informed consent was obtained from all participants and assurance was given that the dialogue would remain confidential and identities concealed, ensuring anonymity. Each interview was audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

The analysis of data was undertaken in a number of phases. First, multiple readings of the transcribed interviews systematically informed the development of inclusive, open codes (Patton 2002). This phase focused explicitly on teachers’ focus for learning activities. The qualitative data package NVivo facilitated this documentation in a codebook, inclusive of code titles and corresponding definitions. Once saturation of coding was deemed to have been established, coding shifted to a more deductive analysis as the existing codes were applied to the remaining data, while still being open to any potential new inductive codes. The deductive codes were then organised into more inclusive categories. As advocated by Strauss and Corbin (1998), this stage focused on identifying both commonalities and variations between themes. The next stage of analysis explicitly focused on teachers’ educational outcomes from each learning activity and were deductively analysed into the cognitive (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001), affective (Krathwohl et al. 1964), and, psychomotor (Dave 1970) domains of learning. This step sought to further validate and expand upon initial findings. Following this, exploratory analytical coding was applied to determine relationships among variables such as teacher professional life phases (Day and Gu 2007), subject, and, year of schooling. Throughout the coding process, the research team documented memos (Cohen et al. 2007, p. 469) to record any thoughts about potential findings. The research team further analysed the memos and analytical codes collaboratively to determine the findings of the data analysis. To ensure the consistency of the interpretation of the data, all categories of findings were reviewed and discussed among the research team until consensus was reached. Finally, an iterative approach was used to explore the findings and ensure that all data were properly coded.

The initial open-coding phase of data analysis identified that teachers’ focus for learning activities ranged from the exclusive development of technical competencies to the holistic development of the learner, aligning with the concept of technological capability. To explore the variances and commonalities between learning activities, a five-point continuum was utilised to represent and subsequently quantify teachers’ focus of activities (Table 3).

The vast majority of responses referred to the development of content knowledge and craft skills that have traditionally been associated with vocational education (Table 3). Predominantly skills such as “interpreting working drawings” (PT13), “marking out” (PT05) and “paring” (PT03) or “filing to a line” (PT14) were viewed as the fundamental technical content upon which the subject is based. These skills were viewed as “good practice” (PT02) and it was noted to be fundamental to student’s further engagement with the discipline. It was also noted that the development of such competencies was housed within an explicit framework of constraints:

The minimum [student achievement] would have to be their jointing techniques … it is great that they are able to make nice stuff and bring that home, but that’s to maintain their interest. The minimum skills … they have to be able to do the joints. (PT09)

The emphasis placed on the exclusive development of technical competencies did not progressively reduce as students progressed through the years of schooling, as was anticipated (Fig. 1). Rather a series of activities focused on the development of knowledge and skills was implemented, a process described as “moving up in the joint stages” (PT05).

The findings from the inductive analysis of learning outcomes support this through the dominance of lower order outcomes evident in each domain of learning (Table 4). With such an emphasis placed on the development of lower order outcomes, the prominence of activities concerned with the product rather than the process of learning became apparent:

Ideally every project should be dealing with problem-solving and the idea of solving the problem is a reward in itself … that isn’t the reality, the reality is that you know, young lads [students] want to have at the end of third year their third-year piece, you know, something that they can bring home, something that they can cherish and so on. I think that that angle seems to work as regards lads [students] completing the project to a good standard. (PT02)

I’d expect that everybody would get it finished to a high standard and working together that’s possible, you know. Everybody would bring it home and it would reflect well on what goes on in the school here. (PT07)

To get it finished. To get it finished. Especially at the beginning. I teach in a disadvantaged school and one of our main focuses a lot of the time is getting things finished. Especially with Junior- and Senior-Cycle there’s just so many marks going for getting something done and assembled. (PT14)

The emphasis placed on an output driven agenda is perhaps best exemplified through many teachers’ reluctance to engage students in authentic design problems. When questioned about this, participants cited students’ inability to “conceive” ideas (PT08), or that students lack the “capability design wise” (PT04), despite no prior engagement with design.

Alternatively, the approach that was utilised by the majority of teachers advocated the exposure of student to the problem-solving process, in that there were value-laden decisions to be made but students were not necessarily required to make them:

Then I’d just tease it out with them, like ‘what would be key considerations with the locker?’. ‘What side of the bed is it going on?’. ‘What way will the door be opening if it’s at that side of the bed?’. The heights obviously will be important … (PT02)

Take an ordinary classroom stool. I will get one kid [student] to sit on one and we get him to put his feet up on another and ask him how they feel. They will all complain because their legs are so high. We get out a measuring tape and we will slowly drop down until we get a comfortable height … There is a little bit of I suppose rationalising to be done, a little bit of work to be done introducing the lesson. They have the option then of either a large single mortise, they have the option of rounding … some of them put a nice kind of a gradual arc on the piece, they do their own thing … again we just create a scenario that ‘we want this’, ‘what’s our solution’ and that’s what we come up with. (PT03)

This dialectic between teachers and students occurred typically at the introductory stage of a learning activity.

At lower-secondary level the technology subjects are generally assessed at the end of the third year of study which includes a written examination and a design and make assignment, assessed by means of a physical artefact and a design portfolio. In discussing this activity, it emerged that the format of the assessment appeared to significantly contribute to how participants approached the design assignment:

In October, I give them the layout for the brief. I have a template, I’ve my own template that I use, and I have all the headings because again to be honest with you and I know an awful lot of it … some might say its spoon-feeding them or whatever but you see when it comes to briefs you have your marking scheme … you try and cover a brief as best as best as you can. (PT03)

This often resulted in a formulaic approach to designing, in that teachers led students through the “steps” (PT05) of the design process. This atomisation of the design process, to align with the model of the design process which is assessed was further corroborated by participant seven, who actualises an alignment between stages of the design process, and sections of the portfolio—as governed by assessment criteria:

… we look at the [design] booklets of previous years and we look at the sections that have to be done. We will try and go through the design process and we’ve the five sections to be completed starting off at analysis of design brief. (PT07)

An interesting theme that emerged from the analysis was the relationship between teachers’ experience in terms of years of teaching, and their focus for student learning (Fig. 2).

The emphasis among teachers in earlier stages of their careers was situated in students expressing themselves through their work:

I want them all to enjoy the subject and I want them all to get motivated because that is going to feed into everything. First impressions are important. So that’s the main thing I want them all to get from it, we are going to be going through all the other skills again anyway. The main thing I want them to get is I want them to be happy and I want them to be comfortable and I want them to enjoy making it. (PT13)

My role is to let the student come out in the project, let what they have done, and even if they haven’t done technology before, they will have experiences in other aspects of their lives that will feed into this so whether it’s music or art or whatever so my role is to give them the help that they need to come out in their project. Whatever they are interested in to come out in their own design and try to feed into that because that’s going to help them in the long days when they don’t feel like doing the project, there’s something that’s a part of them rather than something separate that they are not into. (PT13)

This theme also permeated into the nature of tasks engaged with and although recognition was taken of the difficulties in engaging with an open-design task, efforts were made to incorporate this medium of learning:

…when it comes to their third-year project they realise, ‘what I’m trying to make must fit inside this space’. You’re teaching them the concept of solving their own dimensions and finding their own dimensions rather than you telling them what to do. That project takes a long time, there is a lot of creativity required in it, students do a lot of working out… (PT01)

In discussing the focus of learning activities used in higher-secondary education, a very focused narrative pertaining to pressures of meeting the requirements of the assessment system was observed. In the few instances where project-based learning was utilised in the fifth year of schooling, using practical work to support theory was uncovered as a significant theme. Here, model-making activities were used as a support structure to link together different elements of the syllabus. The rationale given for this approach was that past students have found it difficult to conceptualise theoretical aspects of the syllabus and they “need something concrete” (PT01) to aid conceptualisation. This theme was not always pedagogically focused however, as it was established that some teachers’ agendas were assessment framework oriented:

I push the built construction models as much as I can because they overlap with the syllabus … if that comes up in the exam, which it comes up, it will come up, he’s gotten a big head-start in that topic and the other lads [students] will have to study it. (PT04)

I used to do big furniture projects. I stopped doing them four or five years ago because the students weren’t getting the result. They were spending too long making pieces of furniture that were too costly. They cost them too much in time and in money and they didn’t get the standard that they wanted to get … but when I changed it from that way the results have improved a lot. (PT09)

Both participants PT04 and PT09 work in the same school. Describing it as “high achieving” (PT04), the expectations placed on both teachers arose in the interviews, indicating the significant influences that school culture may have on practices:

...at the end of the day we are delivering a service. We are expected to make our students excel in the subjects, to get the points to go onto college. (PT09)

On a similar note, the benefits of fostering a reductionist approach to teaching were outlined by many teachers, as the predictability of examination questions afforded teachers the opportunity to “taper” (PT02) syllabus content down. This theme also permeated practical coursework assessments:

I had two students last year, two A’s in woodwork, no joints in their pieces. Yet they spent first year and second year hacking through, with me over their shoulder hounding it into them, they learned from that but yet it wasn’t examined. (PT03)

In contrast to this, the graphics-based subjects did not afford this opportunity. PT11 depicts the necessity of students to be able to understand and apply graphical principles to unique problems:

...thinking for yourself would be the big [focus] … one of the things I would be trying to push with them because they are good kids and like as I say you can cover 101 situations but 102 will come up on the paper and to be able to think too, ‘right we never did this but hang on, I know how to do that and I know how to do that and maybe this might work for this’ and to have the confidence to attack it rather than say ‘we never did that’… (PT11)

This theme may provide insight on the prevalence of holistic development activities undertaken by teachers in the 24–30 professional life phase (Fig. 2) or insights into the nature of activity within graphics based subjects.