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

Characteristics of Technology

Characteristics of Technological Outcomes

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand the implications of ongoing contestation and competing priorities for complex and innovative decision making in technological development.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that technological outcomes are a resolution of form and function priorities and that malfunction affects how people view and accept outcomes.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technology at level 7, teachers could:

• provide students with opportunities to discuss the inseparable nature of technology and society and guide them to explore examples to analyse instances of the complex intertwining of society and technology. Contexts for exploration could be selected from areas such as; communication practices and communication technologies, life experiences and medical technologies, sporting endeavours and equipment/enhancement technologies. By exploring such contexts students can develop understanding of the influences on and of socio-cultural factors.  Socio-cultural factors include such things as: social; cultural; political; environmental; economic and spiritual factors;
• provide students with opportunities to discuss technology as a discipline of on-going contestation and competing priorities that require resolution through complex decision making and guide students to recognise the role of functional and practical reasoning in such decision making;
• guide students to critically analyse examples of technological practice to gain insight into how technologists take competing priorities into account during decision making. Competing priorities include such things as: innovation versus acceptance/continuation; time versus quality; majority acceptance versus acceptable to all; social versus environmental benefit; ethical versus legal compliance etc. Competing priorities arise in and are dealt with differently across different aspects of technological practice. Aspects of technological practice include such things as: problem identification and refinement to establish needs and opportunities; the development of designs and technological outcomes; resource selection and justification; post development manufacturing; implementation and ongoing in situ evaluation; maintenance and disposal; and ethical, social and moral responsibilities;
• guide students to critically analyse examples of innovative technological developments. Examples should draw from the past and present and allow students to gain insight into how informed creativity, critical evaluation and the pushing of boundaries can support innovative decision making and outcomes. Opportunity should also be provided to critique innovative developments in terms their impact on how technology is understood and accepted by different groups in both positive and negative ways.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technological outcomes at level 7, teachers could:

• provide students with opportunities to discuss how malfunction can impact on the design or manufacturing of similar and related technological outcomes;
• provide students with opportunities to identify that form refers to the physical nature of a technological outcome and function refers to the functional nature of the outcome. Design elements related to an outcome's physical nature include such things as: colour; movement; pattern; proportion; harmony; taste etc. Design elements related to an outcome's functional nature include such things as strength; durability; stability; efficiency; nutritional value etc. Design elements are prioritised in different ways as determined by such things as a designer's intent for the outcome, understandings of materials, the socio-cultural location the outcome is to be situated, professional and personal beliefs etc;
• support students to critically analyse the physical and functional nature of technological outcomes to identify how design elements appear to have been prioritised and to explain how such a priotisation could be justified;
• support students to analyse the prioritisation of design elements in particular technological outcomes with respect to the intended purpose of the technological outcome, intended users and specific context, the wider socio-technological environment it was a part of, and the era of its development and to make informed judgments as to the outcome's fitness for purpose.

Indicators

Students can:

• discuss examples to illustrate how socio-cultural factors influence technology and in turn technology influences socio-cultural factors in complex and ongoing ways;
• explain technology as a discipline of on-going contestation and discuss why competing priorities arise;
• explain how competing  priorities have been managed in technological decisions of the past;
• explain how critical evaluation, informed creativity and boundary pushing impacts on technological development and public views of technology.

Indicators

Students can:

• explain how malfunction can impact on the design and/or manufacture of similar and related technological outcomes;
• justify how the design elements appear to have been prioritised in technological outcomes;
• justify the fitness for purpose of technological outcomes in terms of their physical and functional nature and socio-technological environment/s they are used within.