Matthew Legg

Background

About Matthew Legg

I have spent most of my working life as a Design and Technology Teacher, specialising in Teaching primary aged children from Year 2 through to Year 8 and developing departments to make them a vibrant and fulfilling curriculum area within the schools I have worked in. My initial training as a Product Designer has been instrumental in the way I have taught over the years, focusing on the importance of being able to complete manageable but also challenging and fulfilling design briefs that are scaffolded to meet the abilities of the age groups I have taught. I have presented the importance of teaching DT in primary schools to many teachers in Government and private International Schools in South East Asia, have contributed to the online recourses offered by DATA and have had an article published in their Designing Magazine titled "Beyond the cardboard box" where the focus was to encourage primary schools to think about their teaching of DT to be more than using the cliché toilet roll and cardboard box approach. More recently, I have drawn upon my inner Product Designer to design and produce kits to improve key making skills in Primary DT but also allowing for a gentle and natural progression for design skills, which I strongly believe need to be nurtured slowly because as we know, design can become very complex and can quickly become too overwhelming for some children. The importance of producing a product with a purpose, made well and with ever improving confidence is what I believe is key to the further development and enjoyment of this subject.