Design and Technology (D&T) in the UK is approaching a crisis point, with declining enrolment, staffing shortages and increasing marginalisation in the curriculum. However, this paper argues that D&T is not a problem to be solved. Rather, it is a solution to be scaled. Positioned at the intersection of material practice, iteration and…

This study investigates junior high school students' perspectives on improving manufactured products and their perceptions as users after participating in materials processing technology learning in Japan. Guided by recent changes in Japanese curriculum guidelines emphasizing real-world application, we conducted a web-based survey collecting 721…

This study aims to investigate affordances of models and modelling in design projects in technology education. To learn more about affordances when working with models and modelling, four Swedish technology teachers were interviewed using a narrative approach. Despite a small number of informants data were rich, containing detailed descriptions of…

eTwinning projects support teachers and students from different countries to engage with each other through online learning. In 2020, the world started to battle with the pandemic and this shifted educational practices from face to face to online learning. In this study, we tried to understand how the pandemic influenced the activity planning,…

Co-invention projects in elementary school engage pupils in complex, open-ended design tasks in a practical, hands-on way. Physical materials are an intrinsic part of design, involving trasformation of conceptual ideas into material forms, such as prototypes. These tangible objects mediate embodied thinking and act as material-social mediators of…

The purpose of the present investigation was to analyze the pedagogical infrastructures in three cycles of seventh graders' co-invention projects that involved using traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing and creating complex artefacts. The aim of the projects was to create high-end multi-material makerspaces by expanding…

In this paper, we explore the divergent and convergent nature of design feedback and the various responses to this feedback from a group of 24 young novice designers (primary school children age 9-11) taking part in a co-design project. Earlier research emphasizes that feedback can encourage a designer to take divergent as well as convergent paths…

This research paper describes the use of the Cognitive Apprenticeship (CA) framework to analyse the practices of teacher and students observed during a technology unit. Twenty three children aged 9-10 years were involved in the research and they were taught in a standard classroom. The analysis provides evidence that a two-phase project-based…