Taking the Softer Option? Aspects of Year 9 Pupils' Attitudes to Using Materials

Abstract

This paper is developed from research undertaken as part of a Masters degree programme at Middlesex University by T. Ford. The objective of the research was to try to understand Year 9 pupils' attitudes to the activity 'making'. It was hoped to abstract from the data:

whether pupils preferred working with certain resistant materials over others and to derive a comparison with previous Crafts Council findings ('Pupils as Makers', 1995)

pupils' views on the realised, practical outcomes of the making activity

The work develops and to some extent supports the view that pupils have clear ideas of their own about the materials that they like to work with and how they should be applied to making products. These preferences correlate to the above Crafts Council findings.