One+Pager+No.+4

= A Turn to Engineering: The Continuing Struggle of Technology Education for Legitimizing for a School Subject =

I came accross this article while doing research for my inquiry project. Although this article is based on the United States, their struggles with trying to keep Technology Education alive and legitimate as a subject are similar to ours. In order to make informed decisions, we must take our blinders off and look at what others have done, what has worked for them and what hasn`t. Furthermore, we have to look at our system and look at trends at a local, provincial, and national scale to see what has helped AND hindered our profession and the societal impacts these changes has made.

In class an interesting point was brought up about tailoring and marketing Technology Education more academically and the impact that will have on the students that haven`t done well in the confined box of academia. The concern was that the students who relied on Tech Ed as a place and subject where they could finally feel pride and success would be left behind with the introduction and competition of academics.

The rebuttal had an equally valid point in that if we don`t make a change and more shops close and less and less Tech Ed classes exist, those students, all students, will have no where to go in the realm of Tech Ed.

I chose to post this not as a personal refection, but as a thought peice that presents a little bit from each side.

I believe that validating Tech Ed as a subject and keeping it alive, let alone flourishing, will take a lot more than remarketing our programs. You can only change your product so much to fit a flawed market.

An excerpt:
``Where would the current preoccupation with engineering lead? And is this new preoccupation a bright prospect for the field? Charles Bennett, founder of the Mississippi Valley Conference, cautioned once that “…we should not be turned aside by each new thing that appears. It is to be expected that there will be some chaff to be blown from each year’s crop of grain” (Bennett, 1914, p.15). As we consider the notion of pre-engineering this is a caution that is appropriate now. It is the view of this author that pre-engineering is an instructive movement for technology education, with long lasting possibilities, //where it emanates from a regular, as opposed to a movement conception//.

``This is not to discount the value of movement conceptions of preengineering, such as Project Lead The Way. Programs of this order help push the subject beyond its normal bounds, by making it acceptable as high status knowledge. Further, this approach to technology education fills the void in the progression of the subject in schools that occurs in the high school grades. The focus on careers of PLTW and the Stony Brook model is quite sensible, and unmasks the folly that technology education must respond to a pure liberal impetus, and shun vocationalist connections. There is evidence that school programs can make a difference in students’ choice of scientific and engineering careers (Woolnough, et al, 1997), and for this reason alone programs such as Project Lead The Way cannot be discounted.

``But while it is an advance of sorts to become able to figure in permutations with high status subjects such as science and mathematics, and by proxy to be associated with engineering, mainly the gain of movement versions of preengineering will be on the sociological front, and not on the epistemological front. The beneficiaries are those students who are already highly motivated, and for whom college is a natural next stage after high school. This is the gain. But a caution is needed here, in case the PLTW money bubble bursts, and the subject has to return to its long standing clientele, many of whom are closer to the center of academic performance.

``I feel that pre-engineering in its regular dimension has greater long term promise. The reasoning here is that this version of pre-engineering argues the case for the intrinsic worth of the subject, not just in permutations with other high status subjects, but in its own right. It represents an organic advance within the subject—a new stage in its metamorphosis. What makes this version of preengineering important on epistemological grounds, is that the subject is argued on its own terms. Problem posing, problem solving, design, and making, are what make the subject pre-engineering – not being packaged with math or science. This is what makes the Massachusetts case so important, because here technology education becomes engineering, and not just in the high school grades, but all the way from pre-kindergarten up. The subject is accepted on its own terms, and then its important relationships with science and mathematics are exploited.

``The idea of “Technology for all Americans,” is a democratic one. But technology education has difficulties on this score since the subject is still largely male-centered. A pre-engineering approach that starts in prekindergarten is more likely to democratize the subject than one which starts later. It is quite possible that because of successes in technology education, some students, who ordinarily might be intimidated by high status subjects, would now venture to take such subjects. The most powerful work of the subject remains that which it does among the children of the masses.

``It is well to remember that while engineering careers are a logical extensionof the pursuit of the subject in school, it is not the only logical extension. While the careers focus is sensible, technology education still has as its major purpose the inculcation of technological literacy, and in fulfilling this purpose, the subjects with which the subject should partner in the curriculum ought not to be limited merely to those in a career trajectory. Foster (1995) reminded us that, close to its origins, the subject was conceived as social study. Indeed, this was the vein in which Dewey perceived it. Woodward was clear on its multi-faceted rationale. In providing evidence of the post-graduation pursuits of students of the St. Louis manual Training school, he reported that “Of 239 graduates … representing about 500 students entering the school, 87 have gone into higher education in the line of the professions or teaching. The professions are law, more often medicine, dentistry and surgery, and still more often architecture and engineering” (p. 74).

``That was of course another time, but the essential notion remains, that study of technology education ought to lead to multiple ends. This very important fact is a caution that while the subject may derive from engineering, the many roads that could lead from it are a strong argument against it becoming pre-anything. Sanders & Binderup (2000) provide several illustrations of how the subject intersects with non-technical subjects in the curriculum, including the social sciences. These intersections can lead to a host of careers, far beyond engineering.

``The turn to engineering for the field of technology education is a turn away from knowledge premised upon blue collar craft traditions, toward that premised upon white-collar professional traditions. In making this turn, what should the field leave behind? It is true that in today’s workplace, distinctions between classes of workers have become blurred, and that technology has decimated many traditional crafts. But when this author stands at a construction site, he sees a continuum of workers, from those installing air-conditioning infrastructure, to welders, carpenters, brick-layers, crane-operators, and engineers. They all are engaged in putting the pieces of an engineering puzzle together and they are all interdependent. There is a danger in conceiving the subject as pre-engineering, and in our desire to have it become more acceptable as valid school knowledge, we may take ourselves too seriously, throwing out those aspects of engineering that remind us of our humble practical traditions, and keeping only those aspects that resonate with the dominant academic ideology of schools. Pre-engineering has to mean the full range of engineering knowledge, reflective of the full range of engineering careers in which citizens representative of all of the social classes engage.``