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Leadership development as a missed opportunity in design and technology education
Date
2026-02-20
Abstract
One of the purposes of Design and Technology Education (DTE) in schools has traditionally been the development of students’ technological capability. While this purpose remains valuable, I argue that there is a missed opportunity to make explicit the socio-technological leadership capacities already implicated in technological activity. Drawing on leadership theory, research in engineering education, and perspectives from the philosophy of technology, I examine how DTE is commonly framed through individualised designing and making, and how this framing can obscure the relational, value-laden, and collective dimensions of technological activities. I propose that leadership offers a lens for clarifying these dimensions, not as an additional curricular demand, but as intrinsic to technological capability understood as judgement, agency, and responsibility in contexts of uncertainty. A selective philosophical lens, drawing on Mitcham’s account of technology-as-volition alongside democratic and critical perspectives on technology, is used to argue that leadership is integral to how technological futures are imagined, negotiated, and directed.
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Publisher
Springer Nature
Citation
International Journal of Technology and Design Education
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Funding Information
Sustainable Development Goals
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International