Probing understanding - an ethnographic study of sudent designing

In October 1989 a new honours degree in Design and Technology, which also offered Certificates in Education and Industrial Studies, commenced in the Department. The course aims to link the processes underlying technological design to a much wider vision of the activity of designing. It proposes that these processes have powerful parallels with the activity of learning and the role of the teacher. Education and industry are two of the settings where these links are made. Tutors on such courses normally access student's understanding of design and technology processes through project work. Adopting an ethnographic methodology, of observing and interviewing students in a variety of settings, I am endeavouring to identify the process learning that is taking place (as opposed to what ought to betaking place) and how that learning has been secured. The paper focuses primarily on the methodology whilst the presentation will reveal the emerging results.