Building: BUILDING C
Room: Keynote Theatre C105 ◉
Date: 2022-12-08 11:40 AM – 12:15 PM
Last modified: 2023-01-27
Abstract
Previously I have articulated an alternative future for design and technology education in the form of design and/ or technology 2.0. In part, version 2.0 seeks to detach itself from aspects of previous incarnations of the subject in order to create the space to be reconceived to better “devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1998. P129). Within this context I want to extend the emerging conceptualisation of 2.0 by considering the role of activism within the three domains of students, teachers and the subject.
My starting point is that 2.0, within an education context, should be activist orientated and accordingly, it is not a choice whether to be activists on not, it is the extent and direction of the activism that is for consideration. However, within the rapidly changing and destabilised political context, particularly (although not exclusively), in England, I want to explore how 2.0 orientated pupil and teacher activism can be characterised and framed within an educational context. The central question for this paper is therefore to consider how can design and /or technology 2.0 activism challenge the realities of inequity and injustice through reconceiving the existing ‘human centred’, western, colonized, capitalist model of design and technology education, which currently permeates the English curriculum.