They strive for calm and compliance and my classroom is far from that. My classes aren’t quiet. They aren’t ordered. They don’t conform to the kind of structure that keeps clipboard types happy and I’m unapologetic about that.

Picture this: rainy Thursday afternoon. Late in the day, deep into the term. Twenty-four fourteen-year-olds who should, by all accounts, be entirely over it. Instead, the room is humming. Machines running. Power tools whirring. Materials of every kind being measured, cut, glued, nailed, clamped. Messy sketches and detailed drawings scattered across workbenches. Some being revised, some abandoned entirely, some transcended. Not one student is at the same stage. Not one outcome looks the same. They’re following a process, and that process is leading each of them somewhere different, somewhere genuinely their own.

Some of them are working at a level, or in a direction, that is beyond my skill set.

And I love that. In fact, it’s what I strive for.

They stopped coming to me with every problem somewhere around week three. Probably because I always answer with a question not a solution. Now they nut it out. Quietly, determinedly. Or they turn to each other for feedback, for inspiration, for a second set of eyes. Sometimes they get it wrong. It frustrates them. But it doesn’t stop them. They’re invested. They trust the process. And because they trust it, so do I. Plus I’m there with my safety net of encouragement and guidance to lift them up when they need it.

This is Design and Technology at its best. And, really, this is learning at its best.

Don’t get me wrong. This didn’t happen by accident, and I’m certainly not sitting back with my feet up. This beautiful, productive chaos is the result of deliberate groundwork: understanding this cohort’s capabilities and interests and working through the problem myself before presenting it so I know where they might stumble and where they might surprise me.

The unit is carefully planned, but not rigid. It’s front-loaded with skills and knowledge, and my role shifts as the unit progresses, from designer of the experience to guide, to collaborator, to occasional guardrail. By this point in the term, they don’t need me at the front of the room, and that’s not incidental. That’s the goal.

It’s still not perfect. Not everyone is producing A-grade work, and some days are harder than others. These aren’t all easy students, and this isn’t an easy room.

But that’s entirely the point.

For as long as I can remember (and I’ve only been in education just over a decade) the words student agency, empowering learners and project-based learning have floated around staffrooms and whole-staff meetings like exciting new discoveries. Every time I hear them spoken with fresh enthusiasm, I smile to myself and think we’re already doing that.

That’s just Design.

And honestly? I get it. Survey a cross-section of educators and Design is probably the most misunderstood subject in the room, even among those of us who love teaching it. Early in my time as an ITD Head of Department, I had conversations with genuinely passionate staff who believed they were delivering great Design outcomes by having students laser engrave a downloaded image onto a piece of wood. Beautiful execution. Identical results. No design thinking in sight. They weren’t wrong to be proud of what their students made; they just hadn’t yet seen the bigger picture of what Design could be.

Or when they’re mid-lesson, something goes sideways, and they improvise creatively to keep the learning moving safely forward. That’s Design. The realisation, when it lands, is something special. You can see it happen in real time.

Some of the most rewarding conversions I’ve witnessed have been the old-school, practical, hands-on teachers, the ones who’d never in a million years call themselves designers suddenly recognising that everything they do, everything they value, sits at the very heart of 21st century learning. That their subject isn’t a relic. It’s a rocket ship. Construction is cognitive. Innovation is academic. Adaptability and resilience aren’t soft skills; they’re the whole game. The pride that follows that realisation is something I will never tire of seeing.

I recently encountered a presentation framed around a single provocation: Design is a verb, not a noun. And that’s it. That’s the whole thesis in one clean sentence. Design is not a product or a discipline or a department. It’s a construct, a tool, an experience, a method. It looks different for every learner and it’s incredibly liberating for educators willing to let go of the reins; to pose a problem and trust students to find their own way through it.

That’s not a noble notion. That’s not some future of education we’re aspiring toward. It’s here and it’s now. And Design and Technology is more than ready to deliver it.

At the nitty gritty centre of it all, we are all designers. It’s intrinsic. It’s ingrained. It always has been. Sometimes we just need a nudge to realise it and then space to let it grow.

Just imagine where it will take the students sitting in our rooms right now.

The possibilities are endless.

About the Author:

Having always resisted straight lines and conformity, Carol didn't arrive here with a destination in mind but rather through experiencing different ways of looking at the same problem. From designer to classroom teacher, head of department to curriculum contributor, the common thread has always been curiosity and a why-not attitude. She navigates her career the same way she teaches, by figuring it out as she goes. Carol is currently an acting Deputy Principal in Queensland, where she still considers the ITD classroom her favourite place to think.

The book changed my life. I was a bit lost at the time. Involved in activism but too pragmatic to give myself to any particular cause. Doing a PhD but feeling like academia was too removed from the causes that I cared about. Reading Horton and Freire I had a feeling of shock and realisation: so this is what education should have been about… My own schooling looked nothing like what they were describing. Instead of developing agency, I had learned to follow recipes and fill out assessments with the answers that I knew examiners were looking for.

I’ve spent over twenty years working on this problem. On the one hand, studying what it means to become an expert in design. On the other hand, studying how school systems function in Australia, how to work with them, and how to support teachers better. Where it all connects is that “design capabilities” are precise and effective way of understanding what it means to have agency in a post-neoliberal, AI-powered world.

Our book Taking Design Seriously in Education tries to weave all of this together. It takes the position that all students need to learn transferable design skills. Design is for everyone, not just those who want to become professional designers.

Most importantly, it makes the case for why design subjects (in Australian schools this is Design & Technologies) are just as important as mathematics, science, or English. Design should be resourced accordingly, with attention given to initial teacher education for design, national testing for design (done the right way!), and funding to support better outcomes.

The aim in writing the book is to support this bigger goal of improving the quality of Design education in Australia. We’re currently working on how to support Design teachers better (if you’re in Queensland, we’d love you to come to our upcoming PD and book launch held on September 17th, 2026). We’re also working with principals, independent schools, and state governments.

We’d love to hear from you if you have ideas about how to further this agenda and we look forward to releasing the book in coming months.

References

Cross, N. (2018). Expertise in Professional Design. In The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (Vol. 372). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316480748.021

Kelly, N., Ness Wilson, L. & Huck, V. (In press). Taking Design Seriously in Education, Cambridge University Press, UK

Last week, I sat down with Stephen Andersen, to talk about next weeks Design and Technologies Teacher Association Conference. Stephen who is such a good host, and also happens to be the Treasurer of DATTA QLD. The chat was part of the series Stephen is doing warming us all up for next weeks DATTA Conference, where I’m going to be busy presenting 3 sessions!

• Why Design is the most important subject in school (with )

• The Future of Trades: Connecting Design and Technologies classrooms to real-world manufacturing pathways (with Manufacturing Skills Queensland (MSQ)) and

• Pedagogical Enactments of Design and Technologies: a research informed framework for teaching aligned to the Australian curriculum (drawn from my PhD thesis).

If you’d like more context before the conference, Stephen and I also recorded an extended conversation in early 2025, covering my research into Design and Technologies and ITE, and our shared history in a little town called Nanango.

Thanks Stephen - your work championing Queensland Design and Technologies teachers through DATTA and the podcast is seriously valued!

Yet its aim was just to whet the appetite of attendees of the conference, where the title of our presentation will be “Why Design is the Most Important Subject in School” (Nick Kelly and Leighann Ness Wilson) and it’s a deliberate provocation. As in, why isn’t design taken as seriously as other subjects like Science or English or Mathematics? And how might things change?

Listen to the podcast at https://pca.st/8mfbcz69

I’d been invited to not just present, but to give the keynote address at the conference dinner! What an absolute honour, to then, a few weeks later, speak to a room full of people who care deeply about Design and Technologies education. I used the opportunity to highlight all the potential of our subject, share my research and enthusiasm, and also say some things I felt need to be said.

The talk drew on my research as well as honest reflections on the state of the field of Design and Technologies education. I spoke about the genuine potential I see in Design and Technologies, but also the concerns I have, particularly around initial teacher education, and the broader confusion around how our subject is perceived.

By this time I had begun collaborating more seriously with Associate Professor Nick Kelly. We had shifted from bouncing shared ideas, to drafting the manuscript for a book.

Nick was there in full support as I delivered my Keynote: Contemporary Research into Design and Technologies Education: Insights, Implications and Future Directions.

Watch the full keynote on my website createed.com.au

Fast forward a year, and I feel so privileged to share that, together with my co-authors, Nick and Vaughan Huck - who bought it to life with her illustrations, our book: Taking Design Seriously in Education comes out through Cambridge University Press in August 2026. We can’t wait to share it with the community.

This year, Nick and I are heading back to the DATTA Queensland Conference, this time to present a session inspired by the book: Why Design is the Most Important Subject in School. I also have two other presentations at the conference, which you can check out in the program below. If you’re in Brisbane on 18–19 June, we’d love to see you there.

DATTA Queensland 2026 program

Event registration

The core argument of the talk is that skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication are still in the background of K-12 schooling when, in the era of AI, they ought to be front and center as the most important thing. These four things are known as 21st century skills and they’ve been talked about for decades.

Design should be the subject where these skills get taught, but design isn’t taken seriously in schools in most countries in the world. It ought to be. Design often gets relegated to the background compared to the weighty subjects like English, mathematics, and science.

There are good reasons why schools haven’t adapted to teach 21st century skills well. There are systemic factors at play. The whole point of the designerly schools movement is to build the momentum needed to change this.

My colleague, Leighann Ness Wilson, was in the audience on the day I gave this TEDxQUT talk. She was doing her own work with a similar focus at the time and our conversations over the course of a year became the book that will be out in August of 2026, Taking Design Seriously in Education (Cambridge University Press).

The book starts with the personal, describing the significant influence that a book had on my life. The book is called We Make the Road by Walking, by the educators Myles Horton and Paulo Freire.

Becoming a capable designer is gives you agency in the world. Imagine a school system in which curriculum, the built environment, the assessment regime, and the pedagogy all supported students in becoming capable designers. It’s already starting to happen.

Kelly, Ness Wilson and Huck, 2026

Illustration: "The Expert Designer" by Vaughan Huck, 2025, CC-BY-ND 4.0