This study has its genesis in the introduction of the Year 7-10 Design and Technology Syllabus in New South Wales' schools during the early 1990s. The change threw into sharp relief the question of how do school students engage with design? The new syllabus was influenced by an emerging literature on design methodology that was at that point unproven in school settings. This thesis explores how students conceived, organised and gave meaning to their design experiences at the time when the new syllabus was introduced. Such a focus required a research study design that evokes the richness of such experiences.

The approach drew on Stake's seven-tier model of case study. In this study the case is defied as a two site case of students' design activity in Year 10 Design and Technology elective classes, in the Australian State of New South Wales. The data were gathered concurrently from two school sites throughout a full school year, and comprised 75 separate observations, 30 exit interviews, teacher interviews and two focus group sessions two years on.

The new syllabus was focused on process (as opposed to being governed by a final product). This posed very specific challenges in relation teacher requirements and student needs. Hence a further question of importance is how do the students and teachers engage with the new curriculum and how do they 'make it work'?

The data are presented and organised in a number of forms to best portray the findings. The outcome is an impressionistic picture of a design classroom in which students and teachers take a pragmatic approach to competing demands and demonstrating how they make vital judgements about bringing a project to completion. One of the requirements in that completion in the new syllabus is an added documentation of design activity in the form of the design folio that creates tensions between process and 'making'.

A finding that emerges from the ways students worked on their projects and made sense of them is that student design activity can be modeled on a continuum, the axes of which structure and time and the regions represent their strategic approaches. Five components of design approach were identified. They were naive design, rushed design, adequate design, considered design and disciplined design. 'Considered' types of projects work well for students where both structure was high and there was sufficient time available.

The syllabus requirements seemed to impose a particular kind of structure on students' design activities that tended to formularise design approaches. This tended to invite students to engage in design in a distinctly 'considered' manner. A more common approach to design involved 'adequate' design where students did not feel so structured and were often limited by time and produced expedient results in response to design problems. A less preferred approach to design involved pressure induced by limited time. Designing within such conditions tended to bid down structural sophistication leading to a 'rushed' design approach. Students who engaged in design in this way were limited in time and felt that they had to produce something that would provide some evidence of design effort. Many described this approach as unsatisfactory and personally unsatisfying. A further approach to design was identified during the interview discussions with students and can be described as 'naive' design. Illustrations involved the childhood activities of playing with blocks, Lego and other imaginary play from their earliest recollections of designing.

Students drew on considerable freedoms within prescribed parameters of the design classroom and syllabus. While limited time and ability frequently emerged as mitigating satisfaction with their design experience, most students experienced a sense of 'flow' or engagement (working within the moment) at some stage throughout their design experience. For some this involved the anticipation of undertaking a project, for others reflection on a job well done and others still, described the making as being the point where they felt fully engaged with their design projects. The most positive experience of 'the flow' of design engagement is exemplified by one student's description of the best design experience being "just a good day in your life".