The Elements of Technology for Education.

Overview & Synopsis

Technological literacy has become an indispensable part of general culture. Vocational education must simultaneously provide students with the special and general qualifications required to achieve increased productivity and flexibility. The concept of technological capabilities is based on the pillars of general technology, technical systems, and innovation and design. The development of technology education lends itself to a modular approach. As technology education continues to develop, it can be systematized to include the laws and principles of technology, the structure of technological processes, the design of technical products, and the process and principles of innovative thinking. A model can be developed whereby education about technology and education through technology can be provided. Education can function to identify situations that help people develop the abilities to overcome barriers. The following are among the terms in which technology education must teach students to think: stages of development, variables and decisions, technological assessments, hierarchical and time-oriented systems, analogies, and contradictions and compromises. A series of 27 principles of technology should be taught in learning modules based on a cognitive development model that proceeds from preoperations to concrete operations to abstract operations. (Contains 25 figures, 17 references.) (MN)