The More Things Change, the More (Some) Things Stay the Same

Abstract

Introducing the book, this chapter takes as its starting point five key variables driving the technology education that students experience in schools: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, how the nature of technology is interpreted, and how students’ cultural ways of knowing and acting (their cultural capital) are understood—and that it is the interactions between these that become important in the provision of a meaningful form of technology education. Politics—at both national and school levels—can act to balance (as well as distort) these interactions. Readers are invited to use this framework to consider how technology education might develop as a learning area for the knowledge age.