As a teacher of design and technology (D&T), I’m a passionate believer that sustainability and climate education should be at the forefront of what we do - not simply a bolt-on to the existing design and make projects currently taught in the majority of schools.

Indeed, D&T is often seen as a problem-solving subject and surely one of the most important problems to address today is climate change. This should be part of the design education fundamentals, framing the way, and what, we teach.

Our world is under pressure and we have a responsibility to equip our students with the skills they need for their future, to encourage them to become empathetic, user-centred, digitally literate and innovative problem solvers and critical consumers.

This is what design can help make a reality. This is the key to the future of our subject.

A subject under pressure

But we are facing challenges. Our subject is expensive to run and incredibly hard to recruit for.

Over my 10-year career, I have seen a dramatic decline in teacher recruitment and a considerable number of colleagues that I trained alongside are no longer in the profession.

I advise at other schools beyond my own in a specialist leader of education capacity and have seen a significant drop in the number of students choosing the subject, which leads to pressures on senior leadership teams to combine their small D&T departments with other departments, like the art department, which shifts the subject’s focus to art or craft-based approaches.

While these have their own value in the educational diet of students, skills at the heart of D&T - those analytical, iterative, investigative skills - often get lost when the subjects are merged.

However, education company Pearson and other leading organisations, are putting forward a new direction for D&T - one where learners are challenged to design solutions to real-world problems, like climate change, and to think like the designers and problem solvers of tomorrow.

What would work?

Could this be what is needed to attract the next generation of people into education to deliver it - people who really feel passionate about design education and its purpose?

Students may welcome this move. I see how they are ever more actively engaged in the current discourse surrounding climate change.

The students I teach want to talk about it and, when given the chance, want to address briefs that have a climate change focus.

Many are concerned about their own futures and want to be equipped with skills and knowledge to enable them to critically evaluate the approaches society is taking and design their own solutions to problems of the future.

Today’s students are more switched on to user-centred design than ever before. I am always impressed with their ability to think empathetically towards users and to design with inclusion and equity in mind - two aspects that are also central to Pearson’s new design education vision.

While the curriculum in many schools already guides students through a lot of these areas, many take “design and make” project approaches that do not offer as much scope to be user-centred or sustainability-focused.

Time to act

Workshop skills have their place within the educational pathways of many students, but I believe they should be part of a broader design education curriculum and not the central pillar.

Whatever happens next for design education, for the sake of the subject and the planet, it is essential that the design we teach is relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s society; the learning opportunities are forward-looking, that design purpose celebrates creativity and is rooted in sustainability.

Only then can it provide the best possible foundation for the designers and consumers of the future.

Trudi Barrow is a teacher of design and technology at Sandringham School in St Albans and a former head of design and technology. She was also the winner of the 2022 James Dyson Association Excellence Award for an Outstanding D&T teacher. She tweets @trudibarrow