Dan Davies

Professional design and primary children

An analysis of the way in which primary age children design, particularly when working with a professional designer, suggests that there are several similarities in approach between the two. This observation is supported by evidence from developmental psychology, which has stressed the crucial role which ‘play’ performs in developing childrens inventiveness and ability to solve problems. Subsequent research focusing on childrens designing suggests that this play is fundamental to designing activity, and extends naturally into the more formalised activities of drawing and modelling. Through playing and using narrative language to describe their actions, children are learning to interpret their own mental images. To develop these images and make them more concrete children use their hands in drawing and modelling whilst drawing on their accumulated personal knowledge about the activity of designing, in a similar way to that in which professional designers make use of their own, highly sophisticated skills to bring an idea to concrete fruition. By comparison with some of the rigid models of ‘the design process’ described in schools, designers and children may have more in common than we realise.

Teacher preparation and the national primary science curriculum: a twentieth‐anniversary perspective

In 1989, the progressive introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools in England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sectors of these two countries for the first time. Such was its considered importance, science was placed alongside English and mathematics in what became known simply as ‘the core’. As a result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education provision appeared to benefit enormously. Successive revisions of the national primary science curriculum have brought about many changes, however, each impacting on the primary profession individually in different ways and as a whole. Findings from a recently completed ‘preparation to teach’ survey across several geographically distinct regions of England are presented here which contribute to our ongoing understanding of the overall status of science teaching within primary schools. Twenty years on from when the national primary science curriculum was first introduced and independently evaluated, attention is drawn to the continued progress being made at the ‘chalk‐face’ and to those factors widely perceived as continuing to inhibit delivery.

Multiple viewpoint design modelling through semantic markup

This paper proposes an approach to multiple-viewpoint design modelling based on the concept of semantic markup of digital models of a design. The core of the concept is to make the engineering significance (semantics) of entities in a model of an artefact explicit through markup of the same model by engineers from multiple disciplines. Such markup, combined with current technologies that allow the computer interpretable specification of meaning and executable specifications of process, should allow a higher degree of automation of the manipulation of models within the design process, reducing the amount of user effort required. The development of the approach from concepts drawn from feature technologies and the Semantic Web is described along with experimental work carried out in a current generation commercial Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) suite to test the feasibility of a structured markup for CAE models. The paper discusses the form that a fully realised semantic markup-based CAE system may take. Key elements of such a system are identified and the paper ends with a description of the planned development of the approach.Copyright

A smooth trajectory: developing continuity and progression between primary and secondary science education through a jointly planned projectiles project

This article reports on findings from a two‐year project—‘Improving Science Together’—undertaken in 20 primary and four secondary schools in and around Bristol, UK. The project was funded by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca PLC as part of their national Science Teaching Trust initiative, and had as one of its aims the development of cross‐phase liaison between secondary school science departments and their feeder primary schools. Our findings suggest that, as a result of joint planning and implementation of a bridging unit, there had been an increase in the secondary school teachers’ understanding of both the range of the science curriculum covered in primary schools and pupils’ levels of attainment in the procedures of scientific enquiry. There was also evidence that transfer assessment information was informing planning and that pupils were experiencing greater continuity in their science education.

Primary Design and Technology for the Future : Creativity, Culture and Citizenship

Part 1 Creativity through D&T for pupils and teachers: introduction teaching for creativity and teaching creatively evaluating creativity seeking opportunities and designing creative and intelligent making. Part 2 Cultural contexts for D&T: introduction - childrens multiple cultures the impact of science and technology on society design, technology and the arts learning with differing cultures and traditions. Part 3 Citizenship education through D&T: introduction becoming informed citizens through D developing key skills for citizenship in D creating sustainable futures through active participation in the community.

The impact of creative learning environments on learners: A systematic literature review

This article is based on a systematic review of educational research, policy and professional literature relating to creative environments for learning in schools. Despite the search yielding 210 documents, comparatively few empirical studies were published between 2005 and 2011 that addressed the review objectives. Only 18 studies included in the review investigated the impact of creativity on learners. There was, however, some evidence for the impact of creative learning environments on pupil attainment, confidence, resilience, motivation, problem-solving, interpersonal skills and school attendance. These findings have implications for policy, practice and research internationally.

Sharing Information throughout a Product Lifecycle via Markup of Product Model

The advances in wireless communication and the Internet are leading to an ever-more-global economy and unprecedented changes in business processes. Such a highly competitive global market demands that engineering companies must consider the entire product lifecycle and take advantages of different regions of the world by collaboration between groups based in different geographic locations. The experiences of collaborative enterprises have shown up many issues of communication and information sharing between separate teams or different users at different stages of a product lifecycle. This paper proposes a new strategy to strengthen information sharing among users and partners through the whole product lifecycle. The proposed method utilizes a CAD model to act as a centre-carrier to link the information generated by different users, especially at later stages of the product lifecycle, no matter which formats of the product (i.e., the original CAD model or its derived lightweight representations) the users own. The method provides further support in sharing and retrieving relevant information directly via the CAD model.Copyright

A Matter of Interpretation: Developing Primary Pupils' Enquiry Skills Using Position-Linked Datalogging

Background: This article reports on an evaluation study of a project seeking to develop the use of position-linked datalogging with primary pupils in environmental science contexts. Purpose: The study sought to find out the extent to which the project had developed: (1) participant teachers’ confidence in using datalogging as an everyday part of their science teaching; (2) pupils’ abilities to collect and interpret relevant environmental monitoring data; and (3) the use of scientific data within environmental education in the project schools. Programme description: The project used software which integrates data from Global Positioning System (GPS) with sensor data collected outdoors to produce Google Earth visualisations of environmental quality in each school’s locality. Sample: Phase 1 involved 10 primary schools in the South West of England (2008–9), and phase 2 was implemented in six primary schools in Greater London during 2010. All pupils in the 9–10-year-old age range participated to some extent (N ≈ 450) and each school identified a focus group of between two and four pupils (n = 38) together with two members of staff (n = 32) to be more closely involved in the project. Design and methods: The evaluation adopted a multi-method approach, drawing upon documentary sources (n = 40); observations of continuing professional development (CPD) cluster days (n = 8) and dissemination events (June 2009 and January 2011): baseline pupil assessment tasks (n = 291) and teachers’ baseline questionnaire (n = 25) in September 2008 and March 2010; classroom observations; samples of pupil work (n = 31); end-of-project pupil assessment (n = 38) and teachers’ and pupils’ responses to the project (n ≈ 180) in June 2009 and December 2010; and a longitudinal evaluation in February 2012. Results: Datalogging had become a regular feature of practical science in nearly all project schools up to 30 months after the end of the project, but the use of position-linked logging had not been sustained. While there is evidence of pupils developing a range of scientific enquiry skills through the project, the extent to which their interpretation of data improved is unclear. All participating schools made greater use of scientific data than before the project to develop their environmental education. Conclusions: The project has demonstrated the potential of combining datalogging with GPS technology to support challenging, motivating and relevant scientific enquiry. Primary teachers require targeted technical and pedagogical support to maximise learning benefits for pupils.

Evaluating NESTA's support for science learning.

This paper reports on a commissioned research project to evaluate the impact of support (mainly funding) given by the UK Governments National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to various projects under the general heading of ‘science learning’ over a four-year period (2000–2004). Findings emerging from the study indicate that NESTA is an imaginative and risk-taking project funder, supporting innovative approaches to science education, typically involving special events or producing web-based resources or other e-learning outcomes, characteristically with strong environmental, technological or creative themes. However, the article also reports on methodological and theoretical issues emerging from a medium-scale, largely retrospective evaluation, such as the pros and cons of a ‘multi-method’ approach (Saxe & Fine, 1979; Bennet, 2003); the need to construct a methodology that would be acceptable to the commissioning body, and the extent to which findings can be set within ‘theories of change’ frameworks proposed by Fullan (2001) and Harlen and Kinder (1997).

Quality Assurance in Student Teacher Education

Adapting to change is a common expectation for citizens of the modern societies; particularly those involved in the complex business of education. Populations of the world have experienced the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and now we are changing and adapting to the challenges to our life styles in the Digital Revolution. This new knowledge-based economy or knowledge market has been extremely well documented by the OECD (1996) and the World Bank (1998/1999).