What is it about?
STEM and STEAM education are the latest manifestations of technology education today, and they continue to follow a vocationally orientated trajectory. Industry and the economy desperately need engineers, so say our politicians. Thus, they need school students to enter into the vocationally orientated subject domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. However, from an entry into university perspective, science and mathematics are considered to be the golden subjects leading to professional engineering workplace occupations. Technology education, alas, is not considered in the same terms. It tends more towards craft-based manual occupations. How, then, do each of these four/five subjects in the curriculum reflect the specific work-related occupations they incline towards? Or do they represent occupations that they collectively represent? This chapter explores and reveals several problems surrounding the application of STEM/STEAM in schools today. It also highlights the need to include the concept of Ethnotechnological Literacy as an urgent need in the education of young people today in this digitally controlled world they will inherit.
Featured Image
Photo by Ramón Salinero on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Post-primary school subjects are taught by teachers with expertise in their particular subject domain. Research and history show that technology education has been vocational in the past and present, while science and mathematics are considered academic. While many think that a fusion of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a good thing, even when incorporating Art (STEAM), the practical application is proving difficult, if not impossible.
Perspectives
Technology education in schools does not provide a platform for young people to express themselves and discuss how technology affects them. Vocationally oriented technology education largely continues to focus on craft-based skill development and related knowledge that serves the industry. Even though no one knows in advance what these industry requirements might be, the curricula for technology education support the inclusion of technological literacy, which is primarily situated within the existing pedagogies applied in technology education. Consequently, technological literacy is, in practice, seldom covered. What is required is the creation of a modern-day Agora where young people can share their views on the technologically complex world they inhabit and will inherit. This will necessitate the development of a new form of pedagogy: a nomadic pedagogy that empowers both young people and teachers to contemplate how technology impacts their everyday lives and express how they believe they themselves contribute to technological advancement. Instead of reviving technological literacy, which has been attempted repeatedly over the years without success, this chapter will propose the development and incorporation of a new subject, ethnotechnological literacy, into STEM/STEAM education.
John Dakers
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Why It Is Essential That (Ethno)Technological Literacy Is Embodied into STEM and STEAM Education, December 2024, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004710948_017.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
