An (auto)Ethnographic Narrative of the Teaching of Designing within Design and Technology in the English Curriculum

During the 1980s there was a paradigm shift in technology education within the English secondary school curriculum, resulting in a series of National Curriculum iterations with Design and Technology (D&T) emerging in the mid 1990s. School inspection and academic discourse has identified the relative weakness of the teaching of design in comparison with making. This paper is presented as a personal narrative of the teaching of design, within a qualitative and interpretive paradigm. The findings highlight the challenges for D&T practitioners in their role as teachers of design, examining the nature of design education and how design concepts are framed.