Implementing Technology Education in America's Schools.

Overview & Synopsis

Practitioners involved in implementing technology education in middle, junior, and senior high schools should keep several guiding principles in mind. Technology education is a vital educational component in a highly technological society, and present and future societies will depend upon the wise use of technology as an important factor in survival and human progress. Technology education must be packaged and delivered in keeping with the characteristics and needs of all students at all ability levels. The program should be experientially based and should utilize the base of research findings on how individuals learn. Instruction should take place in the context of a multi- and cross-disciplinary involvement of the learner. Technology education must be extended beyond the craft domination of previous years and most programs, thus making technology education much more broadly conceived than technical education as it is usually understood. The process of technology education must be a holistic one that recognizes the fact that nothing can be studied to any measurable degree within a single discipline. (MN)