Why do Design and Technology Have the Potential to Inspire and Challenge - Essay Example

There are a limited number of pupils that challenge their teachers to provide them with more demanding tasks to stretch their academic skills. On the contrary, very few such pupils are actually provided with such opportunities for their professional development. Higher attaining pupils, in particular, may exhibit gifted skills in one or several areas of design and technology.

Such pupils ought to be given design assignments that possess complex criteria and/or abstract concepts so as to challenge the pupils’ higher-order thinking capabilities (Davies, 2006) (Capel et al., 1999) One way of doing this would be to provide a highly unstructured and ‘open’ task to such pupils, thereby providing maximum opportunity to the pupil to make his/her own decisions and exercise creativity in terms of ‘how’ the task is executed. Considering the ‘social impact of a design as well as potential uses/misuses of the product can help nourish reflection skills amongst such pupils. Giving design tasks that the pupils have previously not experienced also develops innovative skills amongst such pupils.

In order to encourage progression, most teachers will encourage rotational courses in the field of Design and Technology whereby pupils are introduced to a new concept or area every 2 months (Davies, 2006). Based on my previous experience, I find this highly damaging to high attaining pupils. Since the focus is on getting aware of new concepts, the depth of learning is lost as the high attaining pupils find very little time to reflect on their learning and/or learn deeply. As a teacher, I find this equally dissatisfying because I am unable to spend time with the more able pupils and the lack of time sometimes hinders my ability to identify the high achievers.

Furthermore, project-based learning may be used as a pedagogical means to enhance other skills amongst such pupils. This approach involves developing challenging competencies that enable such pupils to ‘design’ solutions to technological problems by working on projects (Mioduser & Betzer, 2007). This is in line with the constructivist theories that describe project-based learning as involving pupils in recurrent themes of action, reflection, analysis, and synthesis. This, however, can be quite a challenging task for the teacher as having low and high attaining pupils in the same group can result in conflicts owing to different paces of learning and patterns of thinking. On the other hand, clubbing only high attaining pupils in the same project can be a likely solution even though that can result in disparity within the class amongst low and high attaining pupils.

Using ICT in design and technology, such as the World Class Tests, opens doors for high attaining pupils to compete with their counterparts around the globe, thereby exposing them to cross-cultural dynamics (Scottish Network for Able Pupils, n.d.) (Davies, 2006). Additionally, high attaining pupils must be allowed to select their own design and technology activities (Owen-Jackson, 2008). The point with which they start an activity or the materials they use should be left at their discretion.

To conclude, design and technology have the potential to challenge the capabilities of highly able students. Since design and technology are open-ended subjects and prone to greater creativity, unstructured assignments and less directly by the teacher during assignments can greatly enhance the critical thinking and creativity skills of pupils. On the contrary, care must be taken to ensure that this group feels integrated with the rest of the class (comprising of low attaining pupils) to avoid social isolation and feelings of inferiority amongst a less able lot of pupils.