Abstract
This chapter advances a case for the pedagogy of critiquing as a central player in quality Design and Technology (D&T) education. Critiquing is seen as a partner to designing – the two being mutually advantageous to D&T learning. However, as with designing, the case is also made for how critiquing serves not only the D&T field itself but also students, teachers and society alike. Thus, it benefits many players and interests, and contributes to D&T’s advocacy both as subject and as component of general education of all students.
While the chapter explores what is entailed in nurturing a pedagogy of critiquing, it does so by taking a ‘critical’ approach to many of the orthodoxies of D&T education such as narrow, teacher-centred, instrumental pedagogies. It necessarily offers critiques of tokenistic interpretations of design pedagogy, of constrained understandings of the nature of technology, and of the overall purposes of what counts as ‘education’. The chapter includes a theoretical base to critiquing; an examination of the kinds of contextual and curriculum issues which face D&T; an exploration of the all-important critiquing-designing interplay; and some concluding cautionary notes.
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Keirl, S. (2020). Developing a Pedagogy of Critiquing as a Key Dimension of Design and Technology Education. In: Williams, P.J., Barlex, D. (eds) Pedagogy for Technology Education in Secondary Schools. Contemporary Issues in Technology Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41548-8_8
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