This PGDE course prepares you for a fulfilling career as an innovative and creative teacher of Design and Technology (D&T), to enable you to deliver an engaging and inspirational education to pupils. You can look forward to practical workshops, seminars and lead lectures to explore the context of pupil attainment in D&T. Explore how teaching and learning in D&T “…is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject” and pupils use “creativity and imagination [to] design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values” (National Curriculum 2014 purpose of study).

During your training you will focus on signature pedagogies for D&T, emphasising the practical application of theory. There will be design and make and evaluation activities as well as demonstration and modelling. Sessions will help you deepen your understanding of the role and nature of D&T in the curriculum and your own personal philosophy for teaching. You will explore the importance of your subject, how children learn and develop a rigorous understanding of the practical, creative and analytical nature of D&T, and the cultural and historical role technological activity plays in society. These sessions will help you identify strategies to support how children learn in the subject.

The aims of the National Curriculum for Design and Technology state that children will:

• develop the creative, technical and practical expertise needed to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world
• build and apply a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills to design and make high-quality prototypes and products for a wide range of users
• critique, evaluate and test their ideas and products and the work of others

In addition to sessions developing your understanding of teaching and learning in D&T, subject knowledge workshops will explore the key knowledge and skills that define the subject; and are supported by your subject knowledge development and didactics journal.