The national curriculum requires that the subjects of the school curriculum are robust enough to define and defend their core of knowledge and cultural experience.

The robust discipline of design and technology comprises:

• the intellectual and practical skills for designing, making and evaluating products and for solving problems
• the knowledge and understanding brought to bear on:
  
  • the context of the problem
  • the details of the problem
  • the generation of a solution to the problem
    

and the capability to combine these skills and understandings in achieving successful end products or processes.

We take so much for granted! The man-made world is just part of our surroundings. Sometimes we imagine that it just happened! But it didn't just happen. Every part of the man-made world has been designed, planned, and created by people; people who practise design and technology. We should be alert to this and appreciate the thinking and the craftsmanship and the ingenuity in manufacturing and production that has gone into the creation of our surroundings.

Look at the catalogues that come through the front door! Look in the shop windows. Everything has been designed and made for a purpose. Is the 'purpose' always genuine? Or is it contrived and thought about only after it has been designed and made?

Imagine that you are the designer of something (such as a camera, a mobile phone, an MP3 player, or, perhaps your own house). What would you be thinking about, as the designer? Where did the brief, or specification come from? Or was the idea yours right from the start? How did your ideas develop?Imagine you were required to make the object yourself (somebody must have made it!).

This page leads to three kinds, or sources, of evidence:

• evidence from the press (especially professional journals)
• evidence from images from a variety of sources
• evidence from biographies to include material in the first person.