Teachers should establish if students have developed robust level five understandings and are ready to begin working towards level six achievement objectives for technological knowledge and plan learning experiences to progress these as guided by the level six Indicators below.

Technological Modelling

Technological Products

Technological Systems

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand the role and nature of evidence and reasoning when managing risk through technological modelling.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand how materials are formed, manipulated, and transformed in different ways, depending on their properties, and understand the role of material evaluation in determining suitability for use in product development.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand the implications of subsystems for the design, development, and maintenance of technological systems.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological modelling at level 6, teachers could:

• guide students to explain how practical and functional reasoning underpin technological modelling. Functional reasoning provides a basis for exploring the technical feasibility of the design concept and the realized outcome. That is, 'how to make it happen' in the functional modelling phase, and the reasoning behind 'how it is happening' in prototyping. Practical reasoning provides a basis for exploring acceptability (including socio-cultural and environmental dimensions) surrounding the design concept and realized outcome. That is, the reasoning around decisions as to 'should it happen?' in functional modelling and 'should it be happening?' in prototyping.
• guide students to understand the concept of risk as it relates to reducing instances of malfunctioning of technological outcomes, and/or increasing levels of outcome robustness.
• guide students to understand how technological modelling is used to manage risk through exploring and identifying possible risk factors associated with the development of a technological outcome
• support students to analyse examples of technological modelling to understand how risk is explored and identified within particular technological developments. Examples should include the modelling practices of technologists and should include instances where modelling was undertaken to explore and identify risk.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological products at level 6, teachers could:

• provide students with the opportunity to research and experiment with a range of materials to develop understandings of how the composition and structure of materials impacts on how they can be manipulated and/or transformed, or combined to formulate a new material;
• guide students to understand that material evaluation enables decisions to be made about how a material would support, or not, the fitness for purpose of particular technological products, and decrease the probability of a product malfunction;
• support students to analyse examples of how materials have been evaluated to determine their suitability for use in particular technological products. Examples should include the material evaluation practices of technologists.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological systems at level 6, teachers could:

• guide students to understand the role subsystems play in the design, development and maintenance of complex technological systems. Complex technological systems are those designed to change inputs to outputs through more than one transformation process;
• support students to indentify why subsystems may be 'black boxed' for development and/or maintenance purposes and guide them to understand how this can result in both advantages (reduced need to understand all aspects of the system, ability to replace faulty subsystem without disrupting the entire system) and disadvantages (trouble shooting can be difficult);
• guide students to understand how control and feedback at a system level allow 'back up' or 'shutdown' subsystems to be employed to reduce malfunction and/or component damage;
• support students to analyse examples of how subsystems have been selected and used in particular complex technological systems;
• support students to use examples to gain insight into how the use of subsystems can impact on system design, development and maintenance. Examples should include system design, development and maintenance practices of technologists.

Indicators

Students can:

• describe practical and functional reasoning and discuss how they work together to enhance decision making during technological modelling
• explain the role of technological modelling in the exploration and identification of possible risk/s
• discuss examples to illustrate how evidence and reasoning is used during functional modelling to identify risk and make informed and justifiable design decisions
• discuss examples to illustrate how prototyping provides information to determine maintenance requirements to ensure minimal risk and optimal performance over time.

Indicators

Students can:

• explain how the composition and structure of different materials enables them to be manipulated in specific ways;
• explain how the composition and structure of materials determines the ways they can be transformed;
• explain how the composition and structure of materials impacts on how they can be combined to formulate a new material;
• describe the role of material evaluation in determining material suitability for use in a technological product;
• discuss examples to illustrate how material evaluation informed the selection of materials in particular product development.

Indicators

Students can:

• explain the variety of roles played by subsystems in complex technological systems;
• explain the implications of using subsystems during the design, development and maintenance of complex technological systems;
• describe examples to explain how control and feedback requirements impact on subsystem use;
• discuss examples to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of subsystems employed in particular technological systems.