This text shows how design and technology has come to occupy a new and central place in the school curriculum and highlights the higher status and new identity now accorded to technology. It explores this new identity, its origins, its manifestations in classroom practice and its possible futures. The author pays particular attention to its role in the national curriculum, to assessment, to gender and race issues, and to management. It concludes with a number of case studies of school practice. This book has been fully revised in the light of new orders for National Curriculum Design and Technology. It is intended for all training and practising teachers of design and technology.