Electronics in the curriculum: opportunities and options

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1 Electronics in the curriculum: opportunities and options Andrew Hunt A discussion of the place of electronics in the curriculum and the potential for creative collaboration between science teachers and teachers of design and technology Rationalisation and renewal Sir Ron Dearing did for the English school curriculum in the 1990s what Dr Richard Beeching did for the railways in the 1960s. He vigorously pruned a National Curriculum that was overgrown, complex and unsupportable. In the first version of the National Curriculum, for example, there was significant electronics content in science as well as in design and technology. In science, pupils had to be taught about a range of components including relays, diodes, capacitors, transistors and logic gates. They also had to be given the opportunity to solve electronic problems through a system approach to setting up decision-making and control circuits based on logic gates, input sensors and output devices and that was just at key stage 3 (11 14 year-olds). At the same time, in the design and technology curriculum for key stage 3, all pupils were required to meet an even wider range of components from which they had to select what they needed to design and make a control system for a product, such as using a tilt switch to control a rocking toy. They also had to be able to use electromechanical devices to ABSTRACT For some years, electronics teaching in England and Wales has been the preserve of design and technology (D & T) and engineering teachers. Now it is reappearing in the more flexible science curriculum at key stage 4 (14 16 year-olds), particularly as a strand in applied science courses. The contrasting approaches to teaching and learning in science and D & T are nevertheless complementary and a stronger interaction between them through the teaching of electronics has the potential to provide a richer experience for young learners. interconnect systems and appreciate the potential of integrated circuits to provide dedicated circuit functions while being able to use logic gates in the design of their products. Sir Ron Dearing s main tactic for rationalisation was to cut out all overlap between subjects. Electronics was scrapped from the science curriculum and assigned to design and technology. As an emergency measure this worked, but it did away with many possibilities for creative collaboration between subjects. The strategy also meant that a significant group of science teachers were cut off from a worthwhile tradition of electronics teaching which they had valued and enjoyed. Electronics thus became part of design & technology (D & T), a new subject that had only recently been introduced into the school curriculum as something radically different in intention from the aims of those subjects that were its forebears, principally home economics, and craft, design and technology. It has taken a long time for the railway industry to return to favour and to start reopening lines and creating new routes. In the curriculum field things have moved faster. The one-size-fits-all science curriculum was demonstrably failing too many young people. Change was essential and, since September 2006, we have had the chance to exploit a more flexible curriculum, especially at key stage 4 (14 16 year-olds). There are new opportunities for electronics. Electronics in design and technology D & T has a distinctive pedagogy aimed at teaching young people to design what they can make and then make what they can design. If their products are going to work, then pupils need to learn technical knowledge and understanding. If they are to look School Science Review, September 2007, 89(326) 57

2 Hunt good, then pupils need to learn aesthetic appreciation. If they are to be realised, then pupils need to learn making or manufacturing skills. If they are to be designed, as opposed to copied, then pupils need to learn design strategies. Each phase of learning in D & T starts with a series of short, practical focused, activities intended to teach the knowledge and skills which pupils need to respond successfully to the next big challenge for which they are being prepared. These focused tasks cover vital features of D & T such as: design strategies; communication techniques; aesthetic appreciation; making skills; technical knowledge and understanding; commercial matters. Once equipped for a new challenge, pupils are then expected to tackle a longer, more open task. They have to generate ideas for a product to meet a particular need or want, and develop those ideas to the point where they have a clear specification and designs for the product. Then they make it and evaluate it against the specification (Nuffield Secondary Design and Technology, 2007). The strength of this approach is that, when it goes well, it can give young people a strong sense of ownership of their work. They gain knowledge and skills and have a chance to prove their capability and spend a sustained period of time on a meaningful task which includes time for reflection. Electronics has not flourished at key stage 4 as part of D & T. The technologies of food, resistant materials, graphic products and textiles are much more popular. Even so, the numbers of pupils involved are not insignificant. Electronics in D & T is certainly very much more popular than a full GCSE in electronics. The statistics of the awarding body AQA, for example, show that for a typical year, in round numbers, about candidates enter for an AQA GCSE in either Electronic products or Systems and control out of a total of about candidates entering for AQA D & T (AQA, 2007a). There are only about 600 candidates for the full AQA GCSE Electronics course. Concern about the relatively small numbers of young people learning about electronics has led to a concerted campaign, supported by two government departments and industry, to try to increase the number of schools offering electronics as part of D & T. This is the Electronics in Schools Strategy which has a website (see References) giving details of training opportunities for teachers and providing access to a wide range of support materials. The website sheds some light on the issues that have inhibited the uptake of the subject in schools. A colourful brochure which you can download from the Why teach electronics? section of the site, highlights the so-called myths that the strategy would like to dispel. These include the perceptions that in D & T: electronics is too hard for teachers and pupils; electronics is too expensive; there is insufficient space in the curriculum; pupils cannot cope with design in electronics; girls cannot or will not do it; teachers introducing a subject like electronics are likely to find themselves isolated and unsupported. The brochure reports on the evaluation of a pilot training programme which has shown that these can indeed all be myths if D & T teachers have the chance to benefit from well-planned professional development and support. The impetus for the Electronics in Schools Strategy is based on the view that electronics plays a vital role in the UK by underpinning innovation, and sustaining competitiveness in the global marketplace. So the need for electronics in schools is essentially driven by the requirement that UK industry should be able to recruit a skilled and motivated workforce. According to the strategy, young people studying electronics as a design and technology subject are learning skills that will hopefully lead them on to follow electronics-related higher and further education paths or vocational paths. As well as electronics within D & T, there are other technological routes to qualifications in this field. These include GCSE Electronics (AQA, 2007b) and vocational electronics programmes within engineering (Edexcel, 2007). Such courses are explicitly designed to benefit those intending to pursue a career in electronics as well as those who wish to further their careers in the sciences and technology where they will meet many electronic systems. The courses meet the need for qualifications identified by industry professional bodies and National Training Organisations. In a technological electronics course the emphasis is on candidates using their abilities to define and solve a problem. Circuits are regarded as the building blocks for larger systems. Components themselves are treated in terms of their function within a circuit rather than in terms of their physics. While opening the eyes of young people to the possibility of a technical career in electronics is 58 School Science Review, September 2007, 89(326)

3 important, including electronics within any area of the curriculum for purely vocational reasons is only appropriate for a small minority. A wider case for including electronics as part of D & T is based on the proposition that all young people, in a rounded educational experience, should have exposure to how the technical world they live in is constructed and operated. Education should enable young people to grow into adults who are at ease in their society and this should include some insight into key technologies. The expansion of electronics into every corner of personal and social life, combined with the ever decreasing size and cost of circuitry, provides the opportunity for developments with the potential for both good and ill. For example, without coherent, or even, it seems, conscious, planning the UK has become a high-surveillance culture; the combination of security cameras, mobile phone use and reliance on credit cards means the average individual can be tracked reasonably precisely throughout their daily travels. Now the introduction of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) based travel cards, for both road and rail travellers, significantly increases the level of tracking possible. It is difficult to engage intelligently in the debate about the wider deployment of these technologies without some understanding of their capabilities. Electronics in science Electronics has reappeared within the science curriculum at key stage 4 as part of the new double and single award, applied science GCSEs. These courses encourage pupils to learn science in context, rather than as an abstract body of knowledge. Problems, contexts and scenarios come first, with pupils then finding out the science as the need arises. The extent to which electronics features in these courses depends on the interests of the teachers and learners. Some electronics is compulsory in the double award science courses. In the AQA Additional Applied Science course there is no electronics. Teachers who have adopted the Twenty First Century Science Additional Applied Science course are free to choose a communications module with a substantial component of electronics (Twenty First Century Science, 2006). If selected, this makes up a third of the GCSE programme. In all these courses teachers are responsible for a relatively high proportion of the assessment. This allows considerable freedom in choosing the emphasis to be given to the different areas of science and technology. Despite the different course specifications and models of assessment, the applied science GCSEs have common features and approaches to teaching and learning. The courses pass the significance test in that learners can see the purpose of their work because it is set in contexts in which people apply science in their work. For electronics this can mean contexts in which people design, make, retail and service communication systems of various kinds. The courses offer success to young learners through the experience of carrying out hands-on standard procedures that are authentic because they reflect workplace practices. When this works well, pupils can take pride in achieving successful outcomes in a context where the results clearly matter. In electronics, procedures of this kind can include assembling circuits, using test instruments and troubleshooting. Crucial in a science programme is the underpinning science that pupils must learn, not only to make sense of what they are doing, but also to ensure that they have enough understanding of key concepts to be able to progress to more advanced courses post-16. This can include the science of electronic circuits and systems and of wireless communication including digital communication. Applied science courses introduce learners to the institutional and regulatory framework within which people apply science in their work. In electronics this might include some awareness of the work of Ofcom, the organisations that set standards and protocols as well as the network control centres for telecommunications. These courses also present problem-solving challenges to pupils, which differ in character from the investigations of a concept-led science course and the design-and-make capability tasks in a D & T course. In an electronic context, the main challenge might be to test the suitability of a device, system or procedure, such as the testing of an electronic product against its specification. There is growing interest in applied science GCSEs and the early signs are that they can motivate pupils who have not engaged with the more traditional, concept-led science courses. These courses can also offer opportunities for teachers to share their particular scientific interests and capabilities with their pupils. Some schools have found that these courses encourage some young people to opt for science post-16 who would previously not have been expected to do so (Bell and Donnelly, 2006). School Science Review, September 2007, 89(326) 59

4 Hunt Curriculum futures A weakness of much thinking about the curriculum is that each subject area is considered in isolation. Pupils are being encouraged to study three GCSEs in the separate sciences, for example, without taking into account the opportunity cost. Maybe allocating more time to mathematics would do more to give young people the confidence to go on to study advanced sciences than more time on science. Planning subjects in isolation also means that all attempts to encourage creative, cross-curricular collaboration have generally failed. The Royal Society of Arts Opening minds programme (RSA, 2007) provides a critique of a subject-based curriculum. The RSA sees a serious mismatch between what the National Curriculum tries to do and what education for the new century should be trying to do. The RSA argues that a curriculum driven by content neglects to develop the competencies and skills that young people need. These include competencies for learning, for managing information, for relating to people and for citizenship. The Opening minds programme is based on the assumption that crucial competencies are not developed in a systematic and progressive way unless they feature as explicit outcomes of education, outcomes that are supported, rather than led by, subject knowledge. The findings of the Opening minds pilot programme suggest that this approach can bring benefits to teachers and learners while meeting statutory requirements. This tension between a curriculum based on subjects and a curriculum designed to develop practical capability has been explored and discussed by the Nuffield Review of Education and Training (Hayward et al., 2006a, b) which points out that a liberal tradition of education, focused on the world of ideas, has too often ignored the world of practice, including the worlds of industry, of commerce, of earning a living and of practical usefulness. The Review team, however, makes the point that the discussion about subjects as opposed to competencies should not be seen as an either-or debate. Subjects at their best represent methods of enquiring into, and of understanding, the world in ways that have withstood critical scrutiny and the test of time. So they provide the resources on which teachers and learners need to draw. The Nuffield Review is work in progress. It has reached the stage of articulating key principles that should inform the design of the curriculum. The Review does not yet offer a definitive answer to its key question: What counts as an educated 19-year-old in this day and age? At the moment, as shown by the Engineering Council s Interaction report (Barlex and Pitt, 2000), the relationship between science and D & T in schools is one of separate, almost totally unconnected and unrelated existence. This contrasts with the perception and reality of the relationship between science and technology in the world outside school. The report argues against any moves to integrate science and technology into a single curriculum area but makes the case for much better collaboration between teachers of the two subjects. The new key stage 3 curriculum from 2008 offers new opportunity to improve links between electronics in D&T and science (and the MfA boards that enabled teaching about decision-making and control circuits are still in the cupboards in many schools). Schools need to consider curriculum pathways carefully if they are to develop a coherent curriculum for their students. Electronics is not a subject but it is a particularly rich field for making links between science, D & T, mathematics and ICT. As such, it could be used by schools as a fruitful testbed for exploring the boundaries between teaching a subject such as science while developing practical capability through D & T. Acknowledgements The author is very grateful for comments and advice from David Barlex (director of the Nuffield Design and Technology project) and Peter Campbell (co-director of the Twenty First Century Science project), both at the Nuffield Curriculum Centre. References AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) (2007a) Archive of AQA Provisional Results Statistics. URL: AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) (2007b) GCSE Electronics specification. URL: Barlex, D. and Pitt, J. (2000) Interaction: the relationship between science and design and technology in the secondary school curriculum. Engineering Council. URL: 60 School Science Review, September 2007, 89(326)

5 Bell, J. and Donnelly, J. (2006) Double Award Applied Science: issues and responses. School Science Review, 88(323), Edexcel (2007) BTEC Firsts in Engineering; BTEC First Diploma in Electronics. URL: PDF Electronics in Schools Strategy (2007). URL: Hayward, G. et al. (2006a) Annual report of the Nuffield Review of Education and Training (ch. 3). University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies. URL: Hayward, G. et al. (2006b) Annual report of the Nuffield Review of Education and Training (part 3). University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies. URL: Nuffield Secondary Design and Technology (2007). URL: RSA (Royal Society of Arts) (2007) Opening minds curriculum network (2007). URL: Twenty First Century Science (2006) GCSE Applied Science, Communications, Teachers and technicians guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Andrew Hunt is co-director of the Twenty First Century Science project and a research associate of the London Institute of Education. a.hunt@ioe.ac.uk NEED A BIT OF A CHALLENGE OR SOME FUEL FOR AN ENQUIRING MIND? Over recent years many educational websites and portals have come and gone as enthusiasm and funding has dried up or moved on...but not this one! Where things never stand still! schoolscience.co.uk is brought to you by the ASE, the UK's largest subject teaching association, with the support of: The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, The British Aerosol Manufacturers Association, Bayer plc, British Energy, City & Guilds, The Copper Development Association, Corus, Earth Science Education Unit, The Engineering and Technology Board, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Institute of Physics, Institution of Chemical Engineers, Johnson Matthey Catalysts, Nirex, Pfizer, Research Councils UK, The Royal Horticultural Society, The Royal Society of Chemistry, Salters Institute, Science Enhancement Programme, Society of General Microbiology, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Total, Unilever and UKOOA. School Science Review, September 2007, 89(326) 61