Engineering links between STEM subjects

Developing cross curricula links between design & technology and other subjects is not an easy task but the following four step approach provides a straightforward way of beginning the task. To begin with the teachers of design & technology must ensure that the curriculum they teach is robust.

A robust curriculum will have designing at its core and involve pupils in making design decisions for themselves. Teachers will orchestrate the number and complexity of the design decisions that their pupils have to make in carrying out a design and make activity in order to ensure that the assignment is appropriately challenging without being daunting and requires pupils to use particular parts of the design & technology programme of study.

Step 1 Auditing a single designing and making assignment:

An important first step in developing a designing and making assignment is to audit the range of design decisions that are likely to be made by pupils tackling the assignment.

This audit can be carried out using five key areas of design decision: conceptual (overall purpose of the design, the sort of product that it will be), technical (how the design will work), aesthetic (what the design will look like), constructional (how the design will be put together) and marketing (who the design is for, where it will be used, how it will be sold). This can be represented visually with each feature at a corner of pentagon and each area of design decision connected to each other area.

This inter-connectedness is an important feature of design decisions. A change of decision within one area will affect some if not all of design decisions that are made within the others.

For example if the way a design is to work is changed this will almost certainly affect what the design looks like and how it is constructed. It may also have far reaching effects in changing some of the purposes that the design can meet and who might be able to use it.

Step 2 Auditing a sequence of designing and making assignments:

For step 2 this audit is carried out across all the designing and making assignments tackled by pupils across a key stage. This gives an overview of the designing that is taking place and if and area of design decision is missing, under-represented or overrepresented the nature of the assignment can be adjusted accordingly.

Figure 12 A representation of design decisions in a designing and making assignment.

Step 3 Identifying design decisions that could use maths and science:

Step 3 involves looking at each area of design decision made in a designing and making assignment and asking two simple questions. What mathematics can pupils use to inform and improve these design decisions? What science can pupils use to inform and improve these design decision?

In many cases the use of maths or science will not be particularly useful in which case there is no cross curricula link. However in a few cases the use of maths or science will considerably enhance the quality of design decisions made. It is here that efforts should be made to establish the links.

Step 4 Important conversations:

Step 4 involves talking to colleagues in maths and science departments about the results of your audit. Almost certainly they will be looking for ways to make their subjects useful through ‘real world’ application and the links you have discovered will provide them with opportunities to do this.

Of course there is still the tricky business of organising the lessons in the different subjects so that these potential links can be made effective but the four-step approach has identified areas of cross curricula work where this is likely to pay considerable dividends to the benefit of all the subjects involved.