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Design and technology (D&T) and citizenship: changing attitudes?
online resource
posted on 2007-06-12, 08:11 authored by Colin Chapman, Tim Lewis, Kirsty SmartBy 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
© DATAPublication date
2004Notes
This is a conference paper.Language
- en