Designing Our Tomorrow
Ian Hosking & Bill Nicholl
Faculty of Education and the Department of Engineering; University of Cambridge, England
Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) is a research collaboration between the Faculty of Education and the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. DOT’s vision is to equip every child with the thinking tools for problem-solving in a complex world. Having worked with students, teachers and other stakeholders in over 10 countries (including England, Eire, Canada and Romania), this presentation critically reflects on DOT’s journey since it started in 2009.
This talk is framed around what we call the 3 A’s: autonomy, ambiguity and authenticity. Drawing on a number of findings from research projects as well as literature from the fields of creativity, education and design, we reveal how the 3 A’s manifest themselves in classrooms. This talk should be of interest to stakeholders including researchers, teachers and educators in general.
Short Biographies
Ian Hosking
Ian joined the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge in 2009 as a Senior Research Associate after 20 years of working in industry. His current research focuses on understanding and quantifying the neurobiological impact of the visual aspects of designs on people. He is the co-founder and co-leader of Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) which is a collaboration with the Faculty of Education that develops teaching resources for equipping students with the “thinking tools” to creatively solve real-world problems. He sits on the British Standards Institute Design for All Committee and is a designated national expert contributing to the new harmonised European inclusive design (accessibility) standard.
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Bill Nicholl
Bill taught Design & Technology (D&T) for 9 years in London high schools. Bill is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge where he set up a distinctive course which trains teachers of D&T. Bill also teaches and supervises MEd/MPhil routes. Bill supervises PhD students on a range of topics including creativity, empathy, assessment, arts in STEAM, masculinities/femininities in design classrooms, across different phases (primary, secondary) and geos (UK, China). He has been Principal and co-investigator on several research projects and is currently a consultant on an Arts Research Council Research Project which focuses on teaching for creativity in primary (5-11 years) schools. His research interests are focused on socio-cultural approaches to [design] creativity, empathy and pedagogy. He is co-founder/Director of a research project called Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) with a colleague from the Engineering Department which has been used in many countries (e.g. Ireland, Canada, Romania).
Bill is on the Advisory Boards for two international Journals and reviews for numerous others. He has many publications including editing a number of books, book chapters and peer-review journals.
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