The Name You Can Say Isn’t the Real Name: A Typology of Ideation for Design and Technology Education

McLain, M ORCID: 0000-0002-8691-3155 (2026) The Name You Can Say Isn’t the Real Name: A Typology of Ideation for Design and Technology Education. Design and Technology Education, 31 (2). pp. 323-343. ISSN 1360-1431

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Abstract

This article is the first in a planned four-part series exploring the ideating-realising-critiquing triadic model of design and technology (D&T) activity. It develops a theoretically grounded typology of ideation for D&T education. Drawing on creativity research, design cognition, distributed and participatory creativity, and phenomenological accounts of embodied practice, it identifies eleven categories of ideation: abduction, adaption, collaboration, collection, combination, generation, participation, somaticisation, speculation, transformation, and transposition. These categories are organised along three analytically independent dimensions: epistemic orientation (the relationship between the ideative act and the problem frame), social orientation (how ideation is distributed across persons and systems), and mediational resources orientation (the mode of engagement through which the idea emerges). The resulting multi-dimensional model resists reduction to a single progression ladder. While the epistemic categories can be loosely ordered by cognitive demand, from adaptive modification within an accepted frame to transformative reframing, this ordering is neither rigid nor exhaustive; the sociomaterial dimensions (and a secondary temporal dimension) crosscut the epistemic axis. The article argues that progression in ideation is better understood as the expansion of a repertoire (in breadth, depth, and fluency) than as movement up a fixed hierarchy. Implications for curriculum design are discussed, including the need for more precise specification of the kind of ideation a learning activity is intended to develop, the visibility of gaps in curricula that attend to only one dimension, and the risk of deficit framing when adaptive ideation is treated as merely a stepping stone to real creativity. The emergent typology was developed in the context of the 2025 curriculum and assessment review in England and requires empirical validation through classroom-based research.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1203 Design Practice and Management; 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy; 3303 Design; 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy; 4010 Engineering practice and education
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration T Technology > T Technology (General)
Divisions:	Education
Publisher:	LJMU Library
Date of first compliant Open Access:	17 August 2026
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2026 12:38
Last Modified:	17 Aug 2026 12:38
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/DTEIJ.article3641
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29153

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