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

Characteristics of Technology

Characteristics of Technological Outcomes

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand how people's perceptions and acceptance of technology impact on technological developments and how and why technological knowledge becomes codified.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that technological outcomes are fit for purpose in terms of time and context. Understand the concept of malfunction and how "failure" can inform future outcomes.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technology at level 5, teachers could:

• provide students with opportunities to examine and debate examples of innovative technological developments. Examples should draw from the past and present and allow students to explore how creative and critical thinking impacts on developments and how what could happen and what should happen were considered;
• guide students to analyse a range of examples of technologies to examine how people's perceptions and/or level of acceptance has influenced the practices and decisions underpinning their development and implementation. Examples should be drawn from the past and present to allow students to gain insight into the influence past experiences have on the perception and acceptance of existing and future technological practice and outcomes;
• guide students to analyse a range of examples of technological practices to identify codified technological knowledge that was used to inform design and manufacturing decisions. Technological knowledge becomes codified when technological experts consider it is useful for a number of situations. Codified technological knowledge refers to such things as codes of standards, material tolerances, and codes of practice including codes of ethics, intellectual property codes, etc. Examples should be drawn from within their own and others' technological practice;
• provide students with opportunities to discuss the role of codified knowledge in technology and understand why and how particular knowledge becomes codified. Codified knowledge provides others with access to established knowledge and procedures that have been shown to support successful technological developments in the past and can serve to remind technologists of their responsibilities. In this way codified knowledge can be used to provide constructional, ethical and/or legal compliance constraints on contemporary technological practice;
• provide students with opportunities to discuss how established codified knowledge can be challenged and that ongoing revision is important due to the changing made, social and natural world. For example, the development of new materials, tools, and/or techniques, shifting social, political and environmental needs and understandings, and technological outcome malfunction, can all serve to challenge existing codified knowledge.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technological outcomes at level 5, teachers could:

• guide students to analyse a range of examples of how technological outcomes have been evaluated as fit for purpose according to its appropriateness to the time and context of its development. Examples should be drawn from within students own and others' technological practice and allow students to examine the criteria used to make the judgment;
• guide students to explore a range of examples of technological outcome failure and support them identify those that are examples of malfunction. Malfunction refers to a single event failure of a technological outcome as opposed to failure due to 'wear' or reaching the end of the outcome's designed lifespan;
• guide students to analyse examples of technological outcome malfunction to gain insight into how such events can inform decisions about the future of the outcome. Decisions may be made to withdraw or modify the technological outcome or retain the outcome with modified operational parameters. Operational parameters refer to the boundaries and/or conditions within which the outcome has been designed to function.

Indicators

Students can:

• discuss examples of creative and critical thinking that have supported technological innovation;
• explain how people's past experiences of technology (both in terms of the nature of practices undertaken and the initial development and ongoing manufacturing of outcomes) influences their perception of technology;
• explain how people's perception of technology influences their acceptance of technology;
• explain how people's perception of technology impacts on future technological development;
• explain how and why technological knowledge becomes codified;
• explain the role codified knowledge plays in technological practice.

Indicators

Students can:

• explain why time and context are important criteria for judging the fitness for purpose of technological outcomes;
• evaluate past technological outcomes in the light of experiences subsequent to their development and/or contemporary understandings;
• explain what is meant by the malfunction of technological outcomes;
• explain the cause/s of particular technological outcome malfunction.