Weaving the specialist material strands of design and technology together.

Abstract

The design and technology curriculum in England has gone through various policy changes since its introduction in the Education Reform Act of 1988. The 2014 policy revised the content to make it slimmer and outlining the essential core knowledge for Key Stage 1 to 3. Schools need to consider wider aspects of design and technology not included in the National Curriculum which they would like to teach as part of their own school curriculum (DATA n.d.). Previous research into D&T explored the challenges of adapting established ways of working and the issues involved in sub-cultural retreat by teachers. This research paper sets out to understand how teachers coped with the 2014 curriculum change and the factors influencing teachers' capacity to implement assessment changes that impacted the need to teach more broadly. The larger investigation followed a qualitative methodology and collected interview data during the first round of teaching the new upper-secondary examination courses in English secondary schools. An interpretive approach to the analysis suggests two ways the teachers conceptualised the change as "coming off the circus of specialist rotations" and "teaching inside a specialism". Challenges for the teachers included the issue of specialist knowledge, traditions of curriculum organisation, opportunities to share expertise, and attitudes towards the policy shift. Teaching outside a specialism is a way to think about supporting pre-service and in-service teachers with the current policy change and ways to modernise the subject in school.