ANALYSING TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION THROUGH THE CURRICULAR EVOLUTION AND THE INVEST... - The Diigo Meta page

• 24 Oct 08
  

  gordon heidel

  Middle Years PAA

  • The aim of this paper is to present this

     

    evolution from the French viewpoint with some interest to compare with foreign experiences.
  • The aim of this paper is to present you some aspects about Technology Education in

     

    the French school.
  • Secondary school is divided into two

     

    main cycles: middle school (ages eleven to fifteen)
  • in 1985, that technology

     

    education was introduced in France as a part of science and technology education in

     

    elementary schools, as a new subject for all pupils in middle schools and as an

     

    optional subject in high schools. We can note four stages of organization of

     

    technology education between 1985 and today.
  • Technology education was conceived of as a new subject and took the place of

     

    MTE (manual and technical education) in terms of hours, classrooms, and teachers.

     

    The curriculum emphasized the industrial environment, leaving little room for home

     

    economics and craftsmanship (COPRET, 1984).
  • At that time, the middle school became the intermediate cycle where pupils

     

    had to make their own personal plan for school, and technology education was

     

    responsible for indicating possible career choices.
  • general goals

     

    were broken down into concepts and skills.
  • curriculum

     

    described the organization of concepts based on four domains of reference:

     

    mechanical construction, electrical construction, and economics management and

     

    computer science.
  • The main problem in introducing the TE curriculum has been to link the general aims

     

    to the specific fields (Sanders, 1999; Ginestié, 2004).
  • To link these subjects together, teachers have had to connect

     

    general aims and specific concepts into an overall pedagogical project (Ginestié,

     

    2005).
  • Many in-service teacher training programs develop this orientation rather than

     

    aiming simply for the acquisition of specific knowledge.
  • implementation of

     

    technology education has not been reduced to the simple substitution of cooking or

     

    handicraft lessons by lessons in mechanics, but the true construction of a "new

     

    world" (Ginestié, 2003).
  • The major plan was to combine the pedagogical project with a theoretical industrial

     

    project method (IPM). We can note comparable initiatives in the UK at the same time

     

    (e.g. Hennessy & Murphy 1999).
  • At the beginning of the Nineties, IPM appeared to be a good solution for

     

    implementing TE in the middle schools.

    • Industrial Project Method 92-99
    Add Sticky Note
  • The main decision to use IPM was published in 1992 by the

     

    French Ministry of Education. This method allows for the simultaneous definition of

     

    content and method for organizing the teaching learning process in TE. Everything

     

    was done so that each TE teacher plans and organizes a new project each year for

     

    each group of pupils.
  • First, projects were

     

    mainly single production projects without any real progression from one year to the

     

    next.
  • Three problems arose that reduced the role of the project in TE
  • Secondly, the teachers' profile evolved considerably during this period, with a

     

    large increase in new graduates from the advanced technological universities.
  • Thirdly, the union of industrial science and technique, with teachers exerting pressure

     

    to open the curriculum to new technologies and new patterns of labor organization.
  • For the first three years of middle school, pupils have to

     

    make different modules of the whole project, but they do not have to make all of it.

     

    The teacher's task is to focus the attention of the pupils on specific points.
  • The Ministry of Education wants

     

    to promote the pupils individual choices about their future and by consequences the

     

    study they have to do.
  • the general method is not the process of design and technology but

     

    more and more the process of observation and experimentation (as we can find it in

     

    sciences education).
  • The IPM is still a reference but it is more an object to

     

    study more than a method to use with pupil
  • These changes are not linked with the

     

    technological evolution but mainly due to the lack of understanding about the place of

     

    TE in the general systems and to the misunderstanding about the aims of this subject

     

    and the knowledge taught.
  • a strong agreement with two points:

       

    o There is some thing to study in technology education ;

     

    o There would be multiple study conditions, perhaps different.
  • A majority of opinion is that TE is simply a

     

    kind of mix between handicraft activities and elements to highlight vocational training

     

    choices (Ginestié, 2000; Chatoney, 2003; Brandt-Pomares, 2003)
  • The articulation between the task and the technique defines a

     

    know-how that expresses the manner to realise a determined task type (Ginestié,

     

    1995).
  • to give the senses in the typical articulation between tasks and techniques

     

    by elaborating a field of meaning in connection with a technology, perhaps with a

     

    theory. It is this elaboration of meanings on the practice that defines, in the

     

    anthropological perspective, knowledge.
  • The problem is not

     

    the transposition of praxis but the transposition of praxeological organizations. It is

     

    not difficult to ask to pupils making something, but it is difficult allowing them to

     

    construct the meaningful on what they make. Certainly, the important instability of our

     

    curriculum is based on this difficulty to elaborate this meaningful.
  • This crossing of analysis rests on the articulation between

     

    task and activity:

       

    o The task is significant to the knowledge put at stake in the elaborated situation

       

    by the teacher in the framework that is fixed (curricular organizations, conditions

     

    of exercises, particular constraints, etc.);

       

    o The activity is significant to the work undertaken by the pupil to progress in the

       

    task that is appointed it by the teacher and representative of the knowledge’s

     

    learning process.
  • The initial framework, elaborated by these

     

    analyses method, does not prejudge of:

       

    o Knowledge put at stake, their presence or not and their school form;

     

    o Organizations elaborated by the teacher so as to organize conditions of the

       

    study of these knowledge;

       

    o Activities developed by the pupil that are induced by the organization put in

       

    game for this study.

     
  • The analysis of the task is therefore significant

     

    how curriculum is implemented, in the particular intimacy of a specific class.
  • the passage to the real supposes to put in stake an analysis of

     

    the activity of the pupil. His perusal of the task, the manner he has to organize its

     

    activity and to orient its actions, what it takes in consideration and what it does not

     

    see even, allow characterising his learning process.
  • er have a

     

    direct influence on the work of the pupil and on the result of this work. Concerning the

     

    technology education (but it is not specific for these subject), it is important to specify

     

    and to define what is waited from the pupil, recourses he disposes to get there, the

     

    manner whose he gets there.
  • The nature of knowledge that he exhibits,

     

    o The display of the result expected at the end of the sequence,

     

    o The spatial and temporal organization type that he puts in act,

     

    o The strategies that he gives to orchestrate the activity of pupils,

     

    o The different levels of evaluation on which he counts to lean (evaluation his

       

    activity, the progress of his sequence, the activity of pupils, the breach of

     

    results),

       

    o The devices of mediation and remediation that he envisages,

     

    o etc.

       

    Others indicators allow to notice explicit or implicit models that he uses for the

     

    organization of this production:

       

    o model of the logic of pupil learning organized around acquisition of competence

       

    noticed to the breadth of significant observable behaviours versus a

     

    constructivist approach based on the elaboration of knowledge;

       

    o Model of the activity of pupils according to a logic of smooth away difficulties

       

    versus a logic of confrontation to obstacles;

       

    o Model of the teaching organisation according to a logic of guidance of the action

       

    of the pupil versus a logic of problem-solving;

       

    o Model of the organization of knowledge references that one can caricature in a

       

    binary alternative: in technology education, there is nothing to know versus there

     

    is only knowledge.
  • Retained indicators refer directly to

     

    theories of the apprenticeship, notably through:

       

    o The strategy they adopt,

     

    o The manner to organize their actions,

     

    o The manner to notice and to anticipate difficulties and to overcome them or to

       

    avoid them,

       

    o The manner to notice or not constraints imposed by the situation and to take into

       

    account them or no,

       

    o etc.

       

    Analysing the activity of pupils is a powerful too
  • It concerns, on the one hand, to give

     

    indicators of efficiency of a device concerning learning and, on the other hand,

     

    indicators on the manner to conceive plan. To adopt a criterion of efficiency of plan

     

    put in place by teachers is not easy. That supposes to place the question of the

     

    acquisition of knowledge by pupils to the heart of the educational act, what is not

     

    without consequences in TE.
  • Many countries know a

     

    decrease period with disaffection for TE: decrease of budget, reduction of school

     

    time devoted to the subject. At the same time, more and more teams develop

     

    investigation in TE.

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• 
  gordon heidel on 2008-10-24
  Industrial Project Method 92-99

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