ABSTRACT
This chapter presents four complimentary arguments – economic, personal, social, and cultural – to justify and inform a school design & technology curriculum and argues that while an individual school's circumstances may necessitate varying the relative significance of the arguments, to produce a curriculum that did not respond in part to each of them would be a curriculum that was lacking an important dimension. It laments that too often the current justification for design & technology rests on the economic and personal arguments and that the cultural and social justifications often seem underdeveloped. It argues this collection of reasons for design & technology, allied to the particular way in which the subject is experienced makes its contribution to the curriculum both highly valuable and unique – that is, if it was missing, the curriculum hole could not be filled through other subjects and young peoples’ education would be impoverished. The chapter includes a Thought Piece by Alison Hardy. The chapter argues that the educational intentions of our subject can be captured as two main thrusts; technological perspective, which provides insight into the how technology works; and technological capability which,captures the essence of technological activity as intervention in the made and natural worlds.
