Decisions by Design
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Abstract
There is no denying that design & technology is under a bit of pressure at the moment, with the EBacc; GCSE courses being reduced; timetable time under pressure; and even whole departments disappearing. In response to these troubling times, my friend and colleague David Barlex (with others) has published a manifesto for ‘Rebuilding design & technology’. Whilst I don’t agree with all of it, I applaud them for providing teachers and schools with some ammunition with which to counter the current difficulties. Their ‘re-building’ argues for four kinds of validity for design & technology: an economic argument (about jobs); a personal argument (about satisfaction); a social argument (about social justice in a technological world); and a cultural argument (about the designed world). All of this seems to me to be entirely sound. But I think they have missed the validity argument that – for me – is the core justification for design & technology.
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