Nuffield Design & Technology

Nuffield's Design & Technology curricula covers the entire range of student ages, from primary, through middle, to secondary levels (Key Stages 1-4). The materials provide a series of design-related activities, including short, skill-oriented Resource Tasks, case studies, product evaluations, and longer, more open-ended Capability Tasks. Students work to ensure they will know enough to successfully encounter the design tasks and produce viable products. Since students will be redesigning, you might want to review the Ways of Naive Designers.

How do you support students with widely different knowledge and skills to do a design activity? In this movie, you will hear Dr David Barlex, Executive Director of the Nuffield Design & Technology project, talk about some of the key pedagogical features built into the Nuffield materials. Barlex describes the work back-and-forth between the well-structured Resource Tasks (experiment with different types of switches) and more open-ended Capability Tasks (design an electronic device that uses switches to advertise the opening of a new store in a nearby mall). It is difficult with the open-ended capability tasks to emphasize Key Concepts, since students' projects can become quite divergent.