You would expect me and Torben to be full of praise for a book that we’ve written. You can buy it from the publishers Routledge here. However, the foreword by Mary Myatt shows, we believe, that it is a work worthy of consideration and a place in all D&T departments.
Every so often you come across a piece of work which leaves you in awe of its scope, its fresh insights, and its deep humanity. It is no exaggeration to say that Design and Technology in Your School had this impact on my thinking. It is truly impressive in its scope, in its attention to detail, and in its call to arms for a truly thoughtful, intentional, and ambitious design & technology curriculum for every pupil. Jerome Bruner argued that ‘if a curriculum cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those whom they teach. It must be first and foremost a curriculum for teachers’. And it strikes me that this brilliant book by HildaRuth Beaumont and Torben Steeg provides exactly the kind of intellectual nourishment for Bruner’s ambition to be realised. Design and Technology in Your School makes a significant contribution to the curriculum canon in general and to design & technology in particular. In its scope, structure, and depth of the subject’s philosophy, purpose, and connection to other disciplines, it sets a high bar for other subjects. This is a truly impressive synthesis of design & technology’s aims, structures, controversies, and contribution to the human development of individuals and to society. For those involved in planning and teaching design & technology in schools, it is an absolute gift.
This book is ambitious in its scope and intellectually satisfying in the detail, and stands as a model of how to interrogate the purpose and justify the inclusion of any subject within a school’s curriculum. Furthermore, it is grounded in the tough practicalities of planning the subject, delivering it to pupils and students, and capturing the myriad ways in which it might be assessed. The scope of design & technology ranges across how technology works to technology capability. Folded within these dual perspectives are a range of complex, beautiful ways of interacting with and shaping the constructs with which we navigate and enjoy and sometimes spoil our environments. What Beaumont and Steeg have managed to do is provide us with one of the most elegant, enjoyable, and truly thought-provoking insights into the beauty, the potential, and the dilemmas within the subject. It is structured in such a way that the reader is invited to become involved in the conversation.
The structure for each chapter takes the reader on an intellectually satisfying journey of insights, provocations, and a ‘pause for thought’ with a stimulus for conversations with professionals and students: an invitation to enter into a scholarly conversation about the significance of the subject. These are balanced with scenarios and examples from the classroom. And then thought pieces within most chapters, standing in conversation with the substance of the main text. An ingenious way of both including a range of thought leaders in the field and of holding a space for respectful alternative views. Design and Technology in Your School manages to be both a panegyric, appreciated by a general audience on the one hand, and a practical guide for a specialist audience on the other. So, who needs to read this? I hope I’ve made the case that it’s for anyone with an interest in the curriculum in general, and for those concerned with the design and delivery of the Design & Technology curriculum in particular.
Mary Myatt is an education adviser, writer, and speaker. She trained as an RE teacher and is a former local authority adviser and inspector. She engages with pupils, teachers, and leaders about learning, leadership, and the curriculum. Mary has written extensively about leadership, school improvement and the curriculum. Her current work focuses on the Huh Curriculum series for primary, secondary, and SEND alongside the Huh Academy with John Tomsett. She has established Myatt & Co, an online platform with films for ongoing professional development, including the popular Primary Subject Networks and Secondary Subject Networks. Mary is a patron of CAPE, and is a member of the Cultural Education Plan Expert Advisory Panel. She has been a governor in three schools, and a trustee for a Multi Academy Trust. She maintains that there are no quick fixes, and that great outcomes for pupils are not achieved through tick boxes.
As always comments welcome.
HildaRuth and Torben for D&T 