[Design and Technology] FW: Dyson supporting technology teaching in the UK

[David Fletcher]

From: bounce-1906405-808963 at edna.edu.au [mailto:bounce-1906405-808963 at edna.edu.au] On Behalf Of Peter Thompson
Sent: Thursday, 16 June 2011 9:21 PM
To: Engineering Studies and Industrial Arts Discussion NSW
Subject: [esnet] Dyson supporting technology teaching in the UK

 


ESNET, <http://iiate.asn.au/IIATE_PAGES/ProfDevInfo.htm>  Engineering and Industrial Technologies email list.


 


Worth a read.... could this be influential in our national D&T curriculum???  I think we are better placed on a few aspects mentioned.


PeterT esnet admin Bossley Park HS

 

Forwarded by David Fletcher

Secretary,

DATTA.Vic.


 


Business time for design and technology teachers


A new scheme from the James Dyson Foundation hopes to inject passion into design and technology teaching

*	Joanna Moorhead 

*	 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian> The Guardian, Tuesday 14 June 2011
*	 <http://au.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/neo/#history-link-box> Article history

 Teacher David Elton at Malmesbury school gets to grips with a Dyson vacuum cleaner with yr 9 pupils <http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/6/10/1307726136280/Teacher-David-Elton-at-Ma-007.jpg> 

Teacher David Elton at Malmesbury school, Wiltshire, gets to grips with a Dyson vacuum cleaner with year 9 pupils. Photograph: Sam Frost

It's one of the biggest "Cinderella" subjects on the curriculum – but could design and technology be about to get the makeover its advocates say it urgently deserves? Under a new initiative, to be launched in September, the country's best DT teachers are to be given passports to the frontline of British industry and then encouraged to feed back their experience to other DT teachers at regional workshops

It's all part of the billionaire inventor James Dyson's attempt to move in where others have failed and provide what he argues is a much-needed boost to a subject that's had bad PR stretching back decades.

Under the initiative – which will establish a network of "DT ambassadors" – the James Dyson Foundation will spend £100,000 on recruiting outstanding DT teachers, who will be invited to spend days away from the classroom to go into businesses to see how their subject translates into providing core skills within different industries.

Dyson says he is extremely concerned about the declining number of pupils studying DT. "China has compulsory technology lessons, and I think we could learn from that," he says. "DT inspires young people to go into industry as designers, but also, it inspires creativity and – perhaps most importantly – encourages them to work out their own answers to problems. It gives them vital life skills, whether they go on to become engineers or not – and we downgrade it at our peril. DT can come across as dry if it doesn't have enthusiastic teachers with direct experience of how it's used in the workplace. I want to stimulate, inform and inspire DT teachers, who will go on to enthuse others."

Richard Green, chief executive of the Design and Technology Association, which is working with the James Dyson Foundation on the scheme, says the big fear is that the English baccalaureate, introduced last year as a way of grading results at GCSE, will sideline DT as a subject. "Because of the way the Ebacc works, many  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools> schools are now readjusting their curriculum lower down the school to concentrate on Ebacc subjects earlier on – and since these don't include DT, it's not being prioritised.

"In one school, pupils are being withdrawn from a quarter of their DT lessons to concentrate on a modern language because the school wants to boost languages in readiness for those all-important GCSE scores.

"But it makes no sense to have the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills talking about a shortage of people with creative skills in the next decade, while the Department for Education moves towards a more academic curriculum that cuts DT out."

Dyson would like to see DT included in the Ebacc subjects. "I'm all in favour of broadening education, but it needs to be broader still, so DT is acknowledged as the vital subject it is," he says.

"It took me years to realise that DT was my subject, because at my school 'woodwork', as we called it, was for thickos, and I was a bright boy, so the assumption was that I wouldn't be interested in it. This is the perception that I'm fighting to change – because if DT had had the profile it deserves back then, I'd have cottoned on to it a lot sooner than I eventually did."

Eight teachers have so far been identified for the new initiative – among them Steven Parkinson, subject leader for design, technology and engineering at Archbishop Holgate's school in York. "This is about closing the gap between industry and school, so that schools – and that means teachers and pupils – can be inspired in terms of what it's possible to achieve," he says.

"The exciting end of DT is in real-life situations, in business and industry – but often teachers haven't any direct experience of that, because they've gone straight from school through university and training, back into school as a teacher. What they need is to see how their subject makes a difference in boardrooms and on shop floors – and this scheme is going to help do that.

"DT is a whole process – it's a living subject. In school it's too often seen as banging a few nails into pieces of wood, and we have to make people aware of the fact that it's much, much more than that."

In addition to the new funding for DT champions – which will be used largely to provide  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/teaching> teaching cover when teachers on the scheme are out of the classroom in industry – the James Dyson Foundation recently announced £1m worth of funding for bursaries for design and engineering students. Last year, it announced a £5m donation to the Royal College of Art, Dyson's alma mater, to provide new buildings including business incubator units – another pledge to boost engineering. It also loans out engineering kits to schools, enabling pupils to try assembling a vacuum cleaner. Dave Elton, head of resistant materials technology at Malmesbury school in Wiltshire, says the kit is an effective way of helping pupils to connect the subject with a real-life industrial challenge. "We tend to use it with sixth-form students, who then work with pupils further down the school, sharing their skills and knowledge," he says.

Elton says he would welcome the chance to become a DT ambassador. "It's a really good idea, with the current shake-ups in education, to have a scheme like this that helps cement the place of DT in the classroom. DT teachers have to be passionate about their subject, and the way they become passionate about it is seeing for themselves how it works in the wider world."

 

PLEASE DON'T FORGET! hitting reply sends your message to over 1500 others!---
If you want to reply to ONE person, copy and paste their address into the To: field
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-1906405-808963.58697c8da7578edc676d290eb063ca61 at edna.edu.au.
You are currently subscribed to esnet as: dgfletch at bigpond.net.au.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/destech/attachments/20110616/a23d54d8/attachment.html