Loughborough University
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Design and technology (D&T) and citizenship: changing attitudes?

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posted on 2007-06-12, 08:11 authored by Colin Chapman, Tim Lewis, Kirsty Smart
By linking the Design Against Crime (DAC) Education initiative, funded by the Home Office and the Design Council, to the emerging Citizenship curriculum in schools it has been possible to provide D&T teachers with the opportunities to make their contribution to this new cross-curricular subject. The DAC education hypothesis is that understanding of, and attitudes to, crime issues can be modified if pupils are presented with a D&T project which has study of crime, and a focus on crime issues, embedded in it. The research, conducted during 2003, was to establish the extent to which this hypothesis can be proved. Two schools were involved in the project, one a large comprehensive school serving a mainly rural community, the second an urban comprehensive school with a varied catchment area. The research involved in excess of 100 pupils. Year 8 pupils in each school were divided into research and control groups. The initial research involved both groups in each school engaging in focus group activities to establish a bench mark about their attitudes to crime issues. The research groups did a DAC D&T project while the control groups worked through the school’s usual D&T scheme of work. Further focus group activities were used to establish the effects, if any, in pupils’ understanding and attitudes to crime. Teachers were also consulted about their experiences of managing DAC projects within D&T. The paper describes focus group work with pupils which included several innovative features, for example set tasks used to promote discussion and establish decision making. The paper concludes with a discussion about the encouraging results which demonstrate that the DAC projects did bring about a change. One aspect was a change in pupils’ ability to be discriminating when making complex judgements. Additionally, the interviews revealed fascinating information about pupils’ attitudes to social issues.

History

School

  • Design

Research Unit

  • D&T Association Conference Series

Publisher

© DATA

Publication date

2004

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Language

  • en