The new subject of technology is supposed to prepare school students for the Knowledge Economy. But SIMON COLLINS finds the wheels are falling off.
Technology, a new subject that was supposed to drag New Zealand schools into the modern world, faces a rebellion in high schools.
Many students - especially boys - are dropping the subject as soon as it becomes voluntary in Year 11 (Form 5), and taking industrial trade training courses instead.
The secretary of the Auckland Technology Teachers Association, Manukau Institute of Technology construction tutor David Redwood, says what used to be workshop technology has become too academic.
"As the curriculum has become more and more feminised, boys have become more and more loutish."
Defenders, such as Morrinsville College technology co-ordinator Lou Ewington, say the new curriculum is based on where students should be going in this century.
He says employers want students who not only have practical skills but can think and analyse.
But even Morrinsville will introduce straight trade training in furniture, engineering and construction next year.
"It's a Catch-22, really," Ewington says. "Kids vote with their feet."
The introduction of technology in 1999 is one of the biggest changes made in the curriculum. It replaces what used to be called workshop craft, and later design technology, for Forms 1 to 4.
But it has been vastly expanded from that base and turned into one of the seven core areas of learning that all students must take from Years 1 to 10 (Primer 1 to Form 4), with English, maths, science, social studies, the arts and health/physical education.
Its aim is to develop "technological literacy" through three "strands":
* Technological knowledge and understanding - learning how things work and how new things are developed.
* Technological capability - making things, starting with identifying needs and then designing, making, presenting and evaluating solutions.
* Technology and society - understanding how cultural values influence technology, and how technology in turn affects people and the environment.
All the products and procedures making up modern technology have been categorised into seven "technological areas": materials (including traditional woodwork, metalwork and sewing); food (including cooking); production and processes (manufacturing); structures and mechanisms (engineering); electronics and control; information and communications technology (ICT); and biotechnology.
But, like all the new curriculum documents adopted in the 1990s, the technology curriculum does not specify actual course content in any detail. Instead, it encourages teachers to create learning units drawn from students' experiences, preferably using each unit to cover several areas and develop all three curriculum "strands".
Rather than simply explain how things work or how to make things, teachers are expected to help students to understand through solving actual problems.
Lou Ewington, for example, has set his Year 9 (Form 3) students making a toy train for a toddler. They first spend time with a toddler and its parents to assess the child's needs, then design a toy train, check it with the parents, make it, check it again with the toddler, and if necessary adapt it.
"They have to look at the things 1-year-old children play with, and the safety rules of toys that are manufactured."
Teaching is still involved. Because nails would be too dangerous for toddlers, Ewington has taught the students to fit the pieces together with housing joints. When the Herald visited, there was a constant queue of students seeking his help on what to do next, how to do it, or how to use the lathe or sander.
Both Government and industry see the new curriculum as a key to prosperity.
In a note posted on its website last month, the Institution of Professional Engineers said: "Development of innovative skills requires a supportive educational environment, and the technology curriculum provides it."
But its chief executive, Dr Andrew Cleland, is worried that, with the new subject reaching only Year 11 this year and yet to reach most sixth and seventh formers, things are not going well.
"Even at Years 9 and 10, it's been taken up pretty poorly. There are not many technology teachers in high schools. They have come from the previous technocraft, they have had very little professional development. The average age of teachers is old and going up. When you are trying to introduce a new curriculum, you need staff with the right educational background.
"You can't ask a 55-year-old woodwork teacher with two days' professional development to become a technology teacher."
A survey the Ministry of Education posted on its website last month found that many schools were still focused on woodwork, metalwork and clothing - all now lumped into the one technology area of "materials".
In total, 59 per cent of high school technology teachers said they were teaching about materials. But only 43 per cent were teaching about production and processes, 41 per cent structures and mechanisms, 36 per cent ICT, 26 per cent food, 23 per cent electronics and 16 per cent biotechnology.
A third of high school teachers, and 53 per cent of Years 7 to 13 (Forms 1 to 7) schools, said they were not happy about the way they were implementing the technology curriculum. Most felt they had not been adequately trained for the new subject.
Almost half the high school teachers said technology was not adequately financed (43 per cent) or not financed at all (3 per cent).
The president of the Auckland Technology Teachers Association, Ray Kelly, of Howick's McLeans College, says the new subject simply "is not finding favour with the students".
"Some of the less able students are struggling with it, and it's very hard to keep them motivated. It's becoming too academic for them and not giving recognition to their practical skills as much as the [old] design technology approach."
Like many schools, McLeans is introducing trade training next year in furniture, building and engineering.
Aorere College in Papatoetoe has already introduced trade training courses in metal, wood, design and computer-aided design.
"I started off with Year 9 following the curriculum statement and trying to do it their way with design and research," says the college's head of technical and graphics, Lester Elliott.
"Then when we came to the workshop to make it, it all fell apart because the kids didn't have the skill to make what they wanted. All we could do was use the hot glue gun and cardboard. So we have put a lot more emphasis on hand skills, as we always used to."
Even at Rangitoto College, in well-off Mairangi Bay, core technology head David Edmonds says the curriculum is "not geared for your average student".
"I'm giving it my best shot, but there are a lot of the average kids that I feel are being left out."
Edmonds is introducing trade training courses in carpentry, furniture, engineering and automotive trades and expects six of his 10 classes in Year 11 next year to take a mix of technology and trades units. The other four classes will stick to the new technology curriculum.
Years 12 and 13 will take trades courses only, equivalent to level two of the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).
"I wouldn't do technology at level two at the moment. There are no resources, no training," Edmonds says.
Officials agree that there are "teething problems". The national co-ordinator of technology education, Glynn McGregor, says technology should not be seen solely as an academic subject.
"The bottom line is, technology is all about producing things. In most cases, these will be things the kids make to provide solutions to particular issues. Where the academic bit comes in is explaining how that solution meets the original need you had."
He estimates that a majority of secondary schools are treating technology as an integrated subject from Years 9 to 13, but adds: "At the moment, it's not a large majority."
He says teacher training in the new subject has been disrupted by industrial action since it started in 1996-97, and more training is needed.
But it seems clear that the new subject will not suit everyone. At Hamilton's Fraser High School, for example, technology co-ordinator Ray Diprose has consciously adopted "two streams" - core technology and trade training.
"Technology NCEA is quite academic, heading towards university. So we tend to stream our students and the others go into unit standards, which is more like trades."
That is not what the framers of the new curriculum envisaged. But it seems to be where many schools are heading.
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