Design and technology and the five ‘essential learnings’

This paper reports on the requirement to revise and refine a Technology Education curriculum, as a part of a total curriculum review for the Birth-Year 12 age range, with a specific brief to incorporate five (cross-curricular) 'Essential Learnings' - Communication, Futures, Identity, Interdependence, and Thinking. It provides analysis and explanation of each of the 'learnings' as they were envisaged in the curriculum brief and how they drew upon constructivist learning theory. It then describes their shaping as they emerged as dimensions of a new Design and Technology curriculum. What is reported here seeks to demonstrate the way in which a new Design and Technology model, with its three strands of critiquing, designing and making, should not only build on established good practice within the field but should also be able to play a central role as one aspect of total curriculum renewal. It is argued that Design and Technology Education ought be strong and articulate not only for its own intrinsic purposes but also because it can be one pillar of a quality democratic curriculum development.