What is ADST in the British Columbia Curriculum?
The British Columbia Curriculum presents an area called “Applied Design, Skills and Technologies” or “ADST” which has a group of content and skills from traditional and First Peoples practice, existing disciplines of Business Education, Home Economics and Culinary Arts, Information and Communications Technology, Engineering and Technology Education, and new and emerging fields.
In this sense, this area of the curriculum was not designed to be developed as a separate subject matter, but the content and skills should be incorporated by teachers from all subject areas throughout all years of K-12.
The BC curriculum understands that teachers can use the “doing” part of the curriculum as shown in the side picture to incorporate ADST skills and content aligned with the “knowing” and “understanding” from their own subject matter.
What are the features of ADST in the BC curriculum?
The ADST competencies were designed to gradually improve students’ skills and abilities with respect to design thinking and coding across the subject areas. The K-9 curriculum is more foundational and grades 10-12 are more linked to specialized interests and subject area applications:
- K-5 ADST was thought to develop foundations competencies related to practical, creative, and real-life skills. However, it was designed as a more exploratory and purposeful play through designing and making activities.
- 6-9, ADST competencies are related to explorations of specific areas, including some curriculum choices, such as Computational Thinking, Digital Literacy, Metalwork, and Food Studies.
- 10-12, students are invited to choose a specific area of interest or continue to pursue a general interest. In this sense, students can choose subject matter and personalize their learning through courses such as Business Education, Home Economics and Culinary Arts, Information and Communications Technology, and Technology Education.
For more details about the big ideas and competencies of ADST consult the BC Ministry of Education’s introduction to ADST.
Where can I find ideas of how to integrate ADST into the BC curriculum?
On this blog are a variety of posts related to ADST and tools to support ADST learning. You can sort the blog using the ADST tag.
- The Design Thinking and ADST ‘Scarfe Sandbox blog post’ provides guidance on how teachers might incorporate a design thinking lens or a strategy such as Reverse ideation as they engage students in ADST.
- This Sandbox post describes how you could integrate woodworking in your classroom with resources provided by the Construction Foundation of BC.
- If you are looking for guides about how to create your own ADST kit, visit this Surrey Schools web page. You will find a set of pdf files that you can download at the bottom of the page.
Guest post by Peer Tutor Ariane Faria dos Santos (Ph.D. EDCP), Dec. 2021
