Makers, Not Users: Inscriptions of Design in the Development of Postdigital Technology Education

Abstract

AbstractThis paper directs attention to a recent government-led school development initiative in Denmark, where a broad concept and practice of design became central to imagining and reworking technology education for the postdigital condition, in which schoolchildren were imagined to become makers, not users of technological society. Using an analytical apparatus inspired by Science and Technology Studies (STS), the paper examines how and what understandings of design were propagated in the trial of technology comprehension in the public school. The paper examines two design models as didactic-pedagogical translation of design into the epistemic practices of the public school, articulated in the intellectual traditions of Bildung and Didaktik. Examining the knowledges that make knowledges, the paper contributes an elucidation of the features, capacities, and limitations of the concept and practice of design, as it is mobilised to make knowledge and subjectivities about agency and change for schooling in the postdigital educational future.