Delivering Engineering Content in Technology Education: Can the Technology Education Profession Deliver on the Promise of Technological Literacy for All While Preparing the Secondary School Student for Engineering Education?

A Call for Change in Technology Education The technology education field has undergone numerous changes in scope, mission, and principles during its one hundred ten year history in America. From the late 1800s to today, technology education has transitioned through methodological and philosophical changes in an effort to meet the demands of an ever-changing technological society as well as to keep pace with industrial innovation and growth. The latest opportunity stems from suggestions for opportunities for greater alignment and closer relationships with the engineering community and the subsequent need for core principles and concepts that will aid that relationship while aligning with the standards. When Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology was released in March of 2000, it reflected the importance of technology to society and the urgency for students to receive an education that leads to technological literacy. It also set forth benchmarks and provided a vision as to what students should know and be able to do in order to be technologically literate. The engineering profession, along with others in the education community, played a role in the development of Standards for Technological Literacy. As evidence of the support from the engineering profession, the standards were endorsed by the National Academy of Engineering. The standards have provided an opportunity to move technology education and pre-engineering closer together and have helped to illustrate the mutual relationships and the benefits of technologically literate secondary students to the engineering profession (ITEA, 1996; ITEA, 2000/ 2002). Once again, the technology education profession is in transition--this time perhaps moving toward greater alignment with the engineering community. While technology education has evolved dramatically in the past few years, the engineering profession was undergoing substantial change as well. During most of the twentieth century, the rapid demand for engineering and scientific understanding led to increased growth in the field of engineering and greater awareness of health, safety, and environmental issues as well as an awareness of the potential negative impacts of technology. Over the span of four decades, between the 1950s and the 1990s, engineering became narrowly focused on scientific inquiry and mathematical/theoretical analysis. Dahir (1993) suggested that engineering education became more theoretical and scientific in its approach "at the expense of practical application" (p. 16). Additionally, Davis (1998) described this process of change by stating that engineering had gone from one extreme as "practical" (more trade-like) to "scientific" (more analytical/ mathematical). Over time, the notion of scientific inquiry and mathematical problem solving won over the practical and design/problem solving closer to the scientific extreme" (Davis, 1998, p. 28). Recently there has been dialog about aligning pre-engineering with technology education in order to help secondary students understand the impacts of engineering development and become literate about the technological world around them (NRC, 2002). With the attention and endorsements given to Standards for Technological Literacy by the National Academy of Engineering, it is clear that a closer relationship between technology education and engineering could develop. Additionally, with technology education moving to include more engineering design as well as its past dealing with practical problem solving, this alignment seems appropriate for both professions (ITEA, 2000/2002; NRC, 2002). Delivering Pre-Engineering in Technology Education As the technology education profession begins to transition toward a new mission of promoting and supporting the development of technological literacy in all students, the post-secondary engineering education profession has initiated a transition toward greater emphasis on creativity and engineering design in the curriculum. …