Exploring Product Analysis as Signature Pedagogy in D&T

about dnt . In this final episode of the pedagogy section of my series what the Research Says About Design and Technology I want to focus on a fourth signature , pedagogy , which design and technology teachers in England might be more familiar with calling product analysis .

This has also been known by the acronym IDEAS , which was Investigation , disassembly , evaluation and Analysis , and I think those four aspects are really key and there wasn't again an awful lot of literature around this .

Gwyneth Owen Jackson and Torben Stieg talk about product analysis as an idea of disassembling , evaluating , investigating a product in their chapter within the book Design and Technology for the Next Generation .

But , as I said , there isn't a little bit of research that some people have done as thinking about how designers look at different products and how they have designed those different products .

So if we take this idea of looking at a product , we can say that it comes under the heading of exploring design and technology in society and if we think back to the national curriculum aims in England , we can see that this understanding of the place of technology in society , how it shapes what we do , how we live , how we work and also how we shape

technology . That is a really key component of an aim of design and technology . Now , I've talked quite extensively about design and technology capability , but this part of it is really important as well this aim of understanding this role , shaping , forming of technology and the impact it has on us and we have on it .

And in the research that I've done about what people value about design and technology , this aim came through quite strongly and when I was looking at heading it , I drew on the work of Steve Cole and thinking about the importance of doing this in a democratic society as being able to critique and analyse and evaluate the impact of technological developments , and what

Steve starts to call it is technological determinism , this idea of us determining it and it determining us . I remember having a conversation with a colleague , court Seaman

, who's done some podcasts very early on for me about technology and technological developments , and we were walking , uh , through london and we talked about I mean , this was 2013 , 14 I think it was .

We were talking about you know , zebra crossings , you know in england , where you press a button and it tells you to wait , and that's how technology is determining what we do , that algorithm that is within that artifact , that product , is determining when we should cross and when others should stop .

So helping children , teaching children how to look at products in this way , is really important , and it's again going back to this blurring of pedagogy and curriculum .

So we're teaching children how to look at products differently , but we're also teaching children methods for looking at products in the same way that a designer , technologist , an engineer , a fashion designer might look at existing products to learn from them . And that's where you're using the product analysis in multiple different ways . It's a pedagogical approach .

It's an activity where you might be asking them to investigate , disassemble , evaluate or analyze an existing product or system and you're structuring it . But you're possibly structuring that around a particular strategy disassembly , for example , working out , then doing an exploded drawing that you're wanting them .

So that's a technique that they could use and choose to use independently , but you're using it as a pedagogical approach that they could then use that exploded sort of view of it , by them having taken it apart to think about how it's constructed and how it works , which is a form of technological knowledge , because in terms of thinking about technological knowledge .

It's not just having an understanding of , and being able to do different processes , it's also being able to understand how a product or a system functions , how it does what it needs to do , and this is in much more detail than that design knowledge of having an approximate idea , an overall idea of the concept of the idea .

Here it's about understanding that much more in detail and obviously , as a teacher , you would structure that over time for those artefacts and products to become more and more complex . So , as a teacher , if you're planning an ideas activity , investigation , disassembly , evaluation or analysis , you need to be thinking about what is the pedagogical approach

? What is the focus of this activity , this idea ? Which one is it an , I , a , d , an e and an a ? Are you looking at , for example , the materials used ? Why that material , not that material ? You , for example , produce a product that's got a slightly damaged casing .

I'm looking here at one of these spring-loaded hair clips that I use to hold my hair up sometimes and it's got a spring in it and the spring's been painted a colour . I've got a number of different colours , but the pin keeps coming out . So we could look at the effectiveness of the product . Why doesn't it have a cap to hold the other end of the pin on ?

What happens if it does come out ? Does that make it more disposable ?

Okay , then we can also look at how the product works , the fact that it's spring-loaded , the fact that the plastic that's used is relatively soft so it doesn't pinch into my hair or rip my hair , and then we can also look at a product in a different way , about where the idea originated from , so you might be able to talk to children about that .

Some ideas develop because it's a new material or a new process which gives new opportunities . Myself and Sarah did a product analysis over a time of baby's bottles .

Myself and Sarah did a product analysis over a time of baby's bottles , showing how products developed over time because of sociological changes , material changes and so on that caused that baby's bottle from you know , in the early 1200s , for example , right the way through to modern times .

And why do children need to be hold them now and why weren't they holding them when they were much younger , and so on . And then also the impact a new design has on its intended users . That's another way of thinking about product analysis . So there's these different ways of exploring technology in society . And I'm doing this and I'm not .

I don't do a video , I keep thinking about doing a video podcast , but anyway I don't , and I'm kind of shaping . I don't do a video , I keep thinking about doing a video podcast , but anyway I don't , and I'm kind of shaping my hands as I've picked up a clip that's on here .

I could pick up the hand cream tube that's on here and start to investigate it and there's something very powerful about handling things and thinking about the materials , the malleability of the tube for the hand cream , the fact that the cap on it is quite and the top of it is quite rigid why would that be ?

And about the way it's joined and how that might be done through heat , and how that's got multiple functions , because it then punches into it a serial cold , which means it's traceable , and so on and so forth . So we can start thinking about all of all of those things in product analysis .

But it's sometimes being more precise and that's the way that what the teacher has to do in thinking about that pedagogical approach . But it's not just about the physicality , about handling things . It's about , um , you know , why not look at a system , why not do a role play of a process or a particular thing .

So you know , I used to get students to go and stand outside the building where we taught in the city , on the city campus at Nottingham Trent , and to say , just observe people going in through the door . How do they go through the door , how do they use the door , how do they step up to it , how do they hold it , how do they push it ?

What happens to the door when they let go ? What happens when the door , you know , when they push it open , does it stay , and so on ? How do people make adjustments ? So the impact , those different products , you know , that physicality of a door opening has on its intended users , and what does that teach them to think about ?

By exploring that form of technology , exploring that form of technology . So it's all of that in terms of investigating , disassembling , evaluating , you know , analysing , but thinking about , as a teacher , what is the focus of this analysis ?

Now , that could lead me on to talking about things like Access FM or Cafe Q , but I'm not going to do that because we're going to start to capture some episodes for a new series of pedagogy in D&T and we're going to look at some of those things in much more detail . So there's not a lot of research on this .

There's not a lot of research on the best way of structuring activities . What works , how do they then ? I think about product analysis at a later date without your guidance .

So if you're doing any of this in a classroom and you're observing some different things , then do let me know and let's talk about how do you plan for exploring technology in society in your lessons and what do you know that works . That has an impact on what the children are learning . Are they learning what you want them to learn ?

Are they able to take that forward , and how does that build on to their design and technology capability ? So I'm always looking forward to hearing from people about what they're doing in their practice . I'm Dr Alison Hardy and you've been listening to the Talking D&T podcast .

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