Background
Jeff Arnold:
With a trade qualification in fitting and turning, Jeff Arnold left a highly paid position in industry to attend Teachers College in 1999. In his second year of teaching he was appointed to a permanent position at Havelock North High School, a co-ed state secondary school with a roll of 1,100 students. When Jeff started teaching, Workshop Technology had moved into Design Technology at the senior level and 'Technology' was becoming a compulsory core subject in the junior school. Jeff currently teaches junior 'core' Technology and senior Metal Technology and Graphics classes.
"Right from the start of my technology teaching something seemed to change every year. As a new teacher it was hard to have to cope with that level of change."
By the end of 2004, the first year when NCEA Level 3 Achievement Standards were implemented, concerns were being expressed within the department that a number of Materials Technology students were having difficulty in identifying and liaising with a client and in documenting their practice to provide the quality of evidence required for assessment. It was a problem particular to the boys, and it was identified as exemplifying differences in the way that girls tend to work, rather than in teaching.
"In that first year students picked one project to work on for the whole year," says Jeff Arnold of his Metal Technology class. "It just got too big - in the end they didn't have the skill required to finish things to a high enough standard. Their focus was very much on the end product and the assessment requirements got lost in the process."
End-of-year discussion within the Technology Department resulted in the decision to combine the three materials technology classes for the first term of the 2005 programme. The idea was to start the year with a one-term, non-materials-based single client context that focused on providing a common framework for selection of and interaction with a client. Students could then apply that knowledge and experience to their second unit with their individually selected client when they returned to their specialised classes for the remainder of the year. This would also enable teachers to focus more on skill development in their particular technological area and improve the quality of the final outcomes.
The 2005 composite class
Co-HoD Technology Carol Rimmer taught the first composite class in the first term of 2005. Carol had approached the nearby Te Mata Peak Kindergarten to act as their common client. The class were to visit the client and identify issues that could be addressed. These issues would be discussed in class, and each student would negotiate one issue to address and present to the client as a conceptual design - a story board or mock-up.
Teaching began with an emphasis on the step-up between Levels 2 and 3, and with covering the terminology with which students would need to be familiar.
Classroom teaching was supported by generic instruction sheets, which are used for all the Level 3 classes and to cover the requirements of the Achievement Standards. "These sheets provide a good back-up to the teaching, and students always have them with them," says Carol. "They're not linear in a way that would restrict practice and they're designed to allow students to achieve at the Excellence level."
To experience a range of technological practice, class visits to a range of local enterprises was also integrated into the programme. "I like students to see real life examples of neat segments of technological practice. You rarely get the required breadth of tech practice from one person from industry - I like to pick up on bits from a variety of different contexts."
Carol Rimmer:
"The first student visit is crucial. I'd primed the client to give only a general overview to the students - any mention of specific outcomes by the client really limits the way the students think about issues that could be addressed. [It turned out] they came back with many more issues than the client had thought about."
Carol carefully pre-planned the first visit to Te Mata Peak Kindergarten, and arranged for students to visit in small groups. Students were told to go and look for potential issues. They took a camera and then the photographs were put on the intranet so all students could refer to them.
Back in class, potential issues were brainstormed, and a series of questions to be put to the client were collectively developed. This process ensured minimal disruption to the client during business hours. The fact that much of initial interaction between the client and students could be organised by fax was also of help here.
Students were encouraged by Carol to look at the kindergarten environment from a range of different stakeholder perspectives - for example that of the child, the parent, the teacher, the BOT, and the community. This clarified the immediate and wider stakeholders and subsequently exposed a wider range of expectations. It was also useful for identifying who was the best source of information.
The solutions that resulted were wide ranging. Each was presented by the student to the client. "The students were very confident in their individual presentations to the common client. I was very surprised. One student's presentation just blew us away. From his folder work it didn't look like he'd actually done much, but when he presented his solution, the depth of his practice and level of his understanding was amazing."
At the completion of this first unit, the Metal Technology students worked with Jeff on their major project, for which they had to identify their own client and produce a finished outcome to address an identified client issue. Jeff immediately noted a distinct improvement in the attitude of the students and their motivation compared with the previous year.
"At the start the boys were a bit apprehensive," he said, "but the way things were structured during that first unit seemed to work particularly well for them. When I took over the class again at the end of the first term I was really happy with the stage they had reached. They had gone through a process of working with a genuine client and were able to transfer that to the selection and interaction with their own client in their next project."
