Driving forward the future of design education
Earlier this year, Pearson announced an ambitious call to action for the future of design education. It generated an enormous and welcome reaction from individuals, schools and organisations in education and industry, and has importantly, created the space for additional key stakeholders to enter the debate.
Our proposal continues to iterate and evolve thanks to the contributions of teachers, industry partners and organisations who want to shape a reformed design curriculum and qualification offer, but the overwhelming consensus is that the time for change is now.
We're pleased to share our new proposal for Responsible Design and Innovation and how this would be achieved in the curriculum and through qualifications.
Our proposal has evolved…
Previously, we shared the voices of over 130+ subject experts and 300+ D&T teachers, who had shaped an initial curriculum built around Design and Systems Thinking, Creativity, Innovation with Sustainability at its heart. We took a first draft proposal called Design for Sustainability out to teachers. A short video capturing their reactions of the workshop can be found here.
Following the positive responses from D&T teachers on potential content and assessment concepts, we were able to focus on listening to feedback, that challenged us on the following questions:
- Does the focus on sustainability reflect a purposeful change for D&T that would retain relevance into the future?
- How will ‘making’ be repurposed from its current dominant position within the curriculum?
- Is this a solution to the content burden in the current GCSE?
- How can the wider challenges around recruitment, funding, training and retention of current D&T teachers be supported in this work?
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Our current thinking
Our vision is for a curriculum focused towards Responsible Design and Innovation in schools:
Responsible design and innovation (RD&I) would develop the human capabilities needed to create solutions to the most important problems facing society now and in the future.
This would be achieved through:
- The study of inclusive user and climate-centred design approaches which build empathic intelligence and responsibility.
- Learning to utilise the materials and processes around us purposefully.
- Focusing designing and making on real people with real problems.
- The prototyping of both digital and physical solutions.
- Drawing together disparate bodies of knowledge, existing and emerging technology, and societal changes, in innovative ways.
- Building the persistence and resilience needed to solve complex issues in ways that enrich the lives of everyone.
- Shaping a more equitable future that students want to live in.
The key features of the curriculum:
- Adapting the primary programme of study to encourage greater empathy, introduce design thinking, encourage iteration within projects, and ensure our youngest designers can collaborate in teams.
- Rethinking the carousel system at KS3 that has created the disparate experience of the subject and may affect effective sequencing of learning for students towards the qualification choices at KS4.
- Repurposing of Designing and Making towards the important contexts of not just sustainable design, but responsible design. We define this as including empathy, inclusion, diversity, sustainability, representation, ethics, culture, commerciality and the economy.
- Focusing on human capabilities - those that cannot be replaced by automation, AI or any advancement of technology in the future, but through which students will gain employment in the workforce of the future.
- Separating food from the shadow of D&T, a recommendation we make on the back of the advice from professional bodies serving the food teacher community.
The key features of qualifications:
- A reduced volume of content that is disengaging D&T teachers and students from the current qualifications.
- Decoupled Designing and Making, so that the NEA becomes two components, each with their opportunity to become the best and most valuable versions of themselves, i.e. designing with the freedoms to innovate, and making to showcase capability of material, tool and equipment application.
- A redesigned written examination, introducing case studies and stimulus material from the contemporary study of both design and engineering industries, giving students a chance to react to information they are given instead of remembering content they have read.
The debate gathers pace
We want to ensure that the proposals are reflective of what teachers need and what will best support the progression of students to higher education, vocational study and employment, now and into the future.
We are committed to sharing more on the progress of this important work, and advancing our engagement with all key stakeholders. We continue to welcome feedback and constructive challenge from those interested in shaping a new future for design education.
If you would like to join the work or stay up to date with our progress, register your interest here.