Saying farewell

Saying farewell to carousel style D&T courses to raise attainment.

Louise T Davies DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE, THE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION

Rotational or ‘carousel’ models, where pupils move to a new material area of study and new teacher every few weeks, dominates the organisation of the Design and Technology Key Stage 3 curriculum in England. This dominance has been maintained despite reports from teachers and OFSTED about the negative effects of this model on the quality of teaching and learning.

“ Teaching which involves the frequent rotation of pupils among different materials areas can result in unbalanced achievement and a lack of progression…. There is little opportunity for these teachers to experience the satisfaction that comes from nurturing pupils’ progress over a period of time.” (DfES 2004)

Teachers know that frequent rotations, if badly planned, lead to frustrating experiences for all. Teachers do not have the opportunity to develop relationships with pupils over time and get to know their strengths and interests, thus it is difficult to support and track pupils’ progress and differentiate work effectively. Even a department that meets together regularly and works closely would have difficulties in making sure valuable information about each pupil is passed on to the next teacher in the rotation. Most projects appear rushed and sometimes unfinished. To finish a project within 6 weeks, teachers have no choice but to tightly structure the project, this often leaves little opportunity for risk taking and creative work. Sometimes the scheme of work becomes little more than a series of focussed practical tasks with no time for pupils to explore their own ideas

For many professionals, if you could change one thing about KS3 to raise attainment - the answer would be - change the carousel course!

As a direct result of that well known fact, the KS3 Strategy Foundation Subjects:D&T programme outlines how teachers can move beyond a rotational course and adopt better planning models as a team. In a small-scale study of D&T departments Louise and Torben found schools successfully adopting a range of non-rotational courses. Most of the schools claim that this has led to improved KS3 results, reduced pupil disaffection, an increased pace of work and better recruitment for GCSE courses. The schools claim that pupils’ perceive D&T as a subject as opposed to disparate material areas and that it has reduced sex stereotyped views of the material areas.

Alternative KS3 curriculum structures
The typical rotational model for KS3 contains between three and six units of work per year with pupils moving rooms and teachers throughout the year - for example, food, textiles, resistant materials (products design), systems and control (ECT)

The non-rotational model promoted by the DfES in the KS3 Scheme of work requires teachers to take responsibility for the teaching of more than one unit of work. All teachers are currently trained to teach two specialist areas.A variation on this is to pair up teachers with complementary skills and have them share two classes between them, each teaching to their strengths. Typically, the pupils change over half way through the year, or they are timetabled to have both teachers every week, and the teachers plan together. Reducing the number of teachers the pupils meet improves planning for progression, assessment, pupil tracking and differentiation.

It also allowed units to be of differing lengths providing flexibility and allowing for working at different paces.

Another approach is, where pupils continue to rotate between teachers and material areas but a key strand of the D&T curriculum, that relating to generic design skills, is structured so that is taught in the same order for all pupils. Thus, the first unit of work for every pupil, regardless of the material area, will include a focus on design briefs that will be built on in later units. Each time a particular material focussed unit is taught in the year it will have the same material area objectives but the generic skills focus will change. This helps pupils to see D&T as a single subject and provides continuity of teaching and progression in learning, especially in the area of designing.

Managing teachers working across a range of materials
The schools using a non-rotational course have developed strategies to support teachers working outside their main subject specialism. Common strategies include;

• The use of a common design process and language in all material areas.
• The use of material specialists to develop units of work, introduce them to the team and support nonspecialists in their implementation.
• Frequent meetings, for example for moderation and sampling.
• The use of Performance Management targets to trigger external INSET related to the development of D&T subject knowledge.
• Health and Safety training.
• The use of technicians to support non-specialists with technical knowledge.