We’re Creative on a Friday Afternoon: Investigating Children’s Perceptions of their Experience of Design & Technology in Relation to Creativity

In the last 15 years there has been an increased emphasis in both educational research and curriculum development upon investigating children’s perspectives of their experience of learning. Children naturally have very particular and important insights to offer in helping us to develop our understanding of teaching and learning. However, research into children’s perceptions in the field of primary Design & Technology education is still at a very early stage (Lunt in International handbook of research and development in technology education, Sense Publishers, Utrecht, 2009a). For example, in three reviews of educational research in Design & Technology (Kimbell in A guide to educational research, The Woburn Publishers, London, 1996; Eggleston in Teaching and learning design and technology: a guide to recent research and its applications, Continuum, London, 2000; Harris and Wilson in Designs on the curriculum? A review of the literature on the impact of design and technology in schools, Department for Education and Skills, London, 2003) there are only passing references made to eliciting and considering pupils’ views and, in the studies where it does occur, it is used as a supplementary method of data collection rather than as a focus of research. The work which exists is small-scale and the majority of studies relate to secondary-aged pupils. The research that we have recently undertaken has tried to redress this gap. It has focused on primary children’s (aged 9–11 years) perceptions of Design & Technology in general (Benson and Lunt in PATT 18 international conference on design and technology educational research: teaching and learning technological literacy in the classroom, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 2007) and latterly creativity in Design & Technology. It has been claimed by many that Design & Technology is a ‘creative’ subject which develops children’s creative abilities. This is a bold claim and one that needs careful consideration. This paper sets out a framework for thinking about creativity drawn from a review of the literature and uses evidence of children’s perceptions of their experience of Design & Technology to compare practice with theory in an attempt to raise questions and issues relevant to both policy and practice.