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A New Technological Literacy

Written by Dr Vicki Compton under contract to the Ministry of Education to support Technology in The New Zealand Curriculum.

Introduction

The aim of technology education in New Zealand is to develop students' technological literacy. This was the aim of the Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (1995) and remains the aim of the revised Technology curriculum in the New Zealand Curriculum (2007). This paper explains the shifts that have occurred between the 1995 and 2007 curriculum in technology. It describes the three new strands and outlines how they contribute to an overall technological literacy. The paper also introduces a series of explanatory papers that have been developed to explain the strands and their components in more depth.

Technological Literacy in the New Zealand Curriculum (1995)

The aim of the Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (1995) was to support the development of technological literacy as based on the three strands:

• Technological Knowledge and Understanding
• Technological Capability
• Technology and Society

These three strands needed to be brought together in all technology programmes to ensure students were provided with opportunities to undertake Technological Practice. Therefore, Technological Practice was seen as the vehicle through which students could develop their technological literacy. Technological areas were provided in the 1995 document as a means of providing teachers with a diverse range of contexts to draw from in the development of technology programmes, and to encourage that students develop literacy from a broad range of learning contexts.

Undertaking Technological Practice has been shown to provide students with the opportunity to collaborate with others and make a difference to their own lives and developments in their immediate community. This has resulted in high levels of student engagement and allowed students to take increasing ownership of their learning and feel empowered to make decisions regarding the nature of their outcomes.

However, after more than ten years of implementing the 1995 curriculum in schools from years 1-13, it has been noted that the nature of the technological literacy resulting from students undertaking Technological Practice alone, was often limited in breadth and depth. It was also often lacking the level of critical analysis required for more informed decision making in students' own practice and, in particular, making choices of a more general nature with regards to technology per se.

These findings led to a realisation that Technological Practice on its own was not enough. Research was then undertaken to identify what might be missing and address these gaps in the revised Technology curriculum in the New Zealand Curriculum (2007)¹.