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Characteristics of technological outcomes NT 6-2

Achievement Standard 1.9, AS91052

Characteristics of technological outcomes focuses on technological products and systems, and how they are evaluated in terms of fitness for purpose. Technological outcomes can be described by their physical and functional nature, and both the physical nature and functional nature are important when evaluating the outcome’s fitness for purpose. A technological outcome can only be interpreted when the social and historical context of its development and use are known.

Achievement Objective: NT 6-2

Students will:

  • Understand that some technological outcomes can be perceived as both product and system. 
  • Understand how these outcomes impact on other outcomes and practices and on people’s views of themselves and possible futures.

Indicators

Students can:

  • explain why some technological outcomes can be described as both a product and a system
  • describe socio-technological environments and the relationships of technological outcomes involved 
  • discuss the interactions between technological outcomes, people, and social and physical environments within particular socio-technological environments
  • explain why understanding socio-technological environments allow technological outcomes to be better understood.

Progression

Prior to level 6 students should have had the opportunity to explore proper and alternate uses of technological outcomes and explain why time and context are important for judging the fitness for purpose, of technological outcomes. Students prior to level 6 must have an understanding of the nature of technological outcomes in both physical and functional sense.  

At level 6 students explore the interaction between technological outcomes and people, society and environments. They discuss why technological outcomes people, society and environments interact both successfully and unsuccessfully, and can identify/describe the social and historical context of the situation why some outcomes can be described as both product and system.

The Teacher Guidance section provides information that supports teachers scaffolding of learning from levels 1-8 of the curriculum. This allows for differentiation of a programme of learning.

The deliberate use of provide, guide, and support in this section signals that as students' capacity for self-management increases, teachers progressively reduce the level of scaffolding provided.

  • Provide – the teacher should take full responsibility for introducing and explicitly teaching new knowledge, skills or practices.
  • Guide – the students have a level of understanding and competency on which they can draw but the teacher remains primarily responsible for continuing to develop these.
  • Support – the students take primary responsibility for their own learning, drawing on all their previous experiences to consolidate and extend their understanding. The teacher is supportive rather than directive.
  • The Teacher Guidance also uses the term ensure to indicate when the teacher plays a monitoring role to check that conditions critical for learning are present.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technological outcomes at level 6, teachers could:

  • Ssupport students to discuss particular technological outcomes as a product and a system and support them to understand that the categorisation of product or system is not an inherent property of the outcome, but rather how it is perceived by people in order to describe, and/ or analyse it.
  • Guide students to explore examples of socio-technological environments to explain how technological outcomes (products and systems) and non-technological entities and systems (people, natural environments, political systems, etc) interact together. Examples should be drawn from past, present and possible future socio-technological environments. Socio-technological environments include such things as communication networks, hospitals, transport systems, waste disposal, recreational parks, factories, power plant
.
  • Support students to understand that interactions in socio-technological environments are complex and result in dynamic relationships between technological outcomes, entities and systems. Guide students to explore the influences 
and impact of these relationships on the way technological outcomes are developed and manufactured
.

Contexts for teaching and learning

In a teaching and learning programme, student exploration of these concepts around characteristics of technological outcomes could support their developing greater conceptual understandings that will inform their own project work. However there is no requirement that students must or must not relate these understandings to their own project work. Teachers may decide to focus on existing outcomes to develop the understandings and then students go on to apply this in their own project work. Alternatively teachers may treat this as a stand-alone piece of learning that is not tied in with student’s project work.

At this level students must have an understanding that how we view technological outcomes is dependent on the environment where the outcome is located and its historical or contemporary context. That is the time place and context for the development of the outcome. This includes both the physical and social environment. For example students could explore what extremes of physical environment might mean for an outcome – will a given technological outcome work in hot, cold, wet, dry, wind, dirty, noisy conditions. Similarly students can explore what different social environments mean when considering a technological outcome and the interactions between it and the social groupings and environments in which it is used. For example how the same outcome would be viewed in NZ or in a different country, would different cultures/religious groups view the fitness for purpose of a given outcome in the same way? Social environment can also relate to the context of time and comparing historical to contemporary eras. Would a product that was successful in a different era still be fit for purpose now or vice versa?

Students should also be exploring the nature of technological outcomes and why some are described as both product and system.

Students will require access to in-depth information relevant to the technological outcome and the interacting people and social and physical environments. You and/or your students can access this information in a variety of ways as appropriate to your context, including:

Literacy considerations

Teachers need to ensure students understand the specialist language related to characteristics of technological outcomes such as:

  • Technological outcomes are products and systems developed through Technological Practice for a specific purpose. A technological outcome is evaluated in terms of its fitness for purpose, and can be described by their physical and functional nature. See resources and teaching notes: Characteristics of technological outcomes.
  • Social and physical environments and socio cultural environment.

Physical environment commonly refers to the location of the specific practice or the place where a final outcome will be located while the social environment refers to the context of a group or groups of people and their interaction with a technological outcome and/or its development. (A subset of a socio-cultural environment.)

A socio-cultural environment refers to the combination of the social and cultural (including historical) context within which a technological outcome is developed or used while socio-technological environment refers to the context(s) created by the interaction of technological outcomes and non-technological entities and systems. Socio-technological environments include such things as communication networks and hospital transport systems. Exploration of these environments shows how technological outcomes (products and systems) and non-technological entities and systems (people, natural environments, political systems etc.) interact with each other.

  • Interact refers to the interrelationships between the technological outcomes, people, and social and physical environments.  Interrelationships must consider both influences and impacts.

Students also must understand the language necessary to communicate their understanding about characteristics of technological outcomes at this level. They will need to clearly understand what is meant by describe, explain, and discuss.

  • to describe is a statement that gives details about the outcome or idea
  • to explain is to describe in detail with reasons – often including the how and why
  • to discuss requires an explanation that is comprehensive, detailed, broad and show evidence of some complexity in thinking. It may be a reasoned argument presenting a particular point of view, or a comparison and contrast between two ideas or concepts; or it may be a detailed reasoning and relationship between several complex ideas.

Resources to support teaching and learning

Assessment for qualifications

The following achievement standard(s) could assess learning outcomes from this learning objective:

  • AS 91052 Generic Technology 1.9: Demonstrate understanding of the ways a technological outcome, people, and social and physical environments interact

Key messages from the standard

This standard is derived from the "characteristics of technological outcomes" component within the "nature of technology" strand of the Technology learning area. Its focus is a discussion about the relationship between the technological outcome, its social and physical environment and the people who are within that environment. Students must consider influence of and impacts on the inter-related factors of people, social and physical environments. These should be considered in the positive and negative, successful and unsuccessful interactions.

This standard requires students to describe, explain and discuss the successful and unsuccessful interactions between a technological outcome, the people, and the social and physical environments in which the outcome is situated.

To access the standard, student will also need to describe the social and historical context in which the outcome is situated, and identify the people and social and physical environments that interact with the outcome.

The student must consider both influences and impacts when discussing the interrelationships that exist between people, the environment and the outcome.

The student evidence (in report, presentation, folio or digital format) must:

  • describe the technological outcome
  • describe the social and historical context at the time of the outcome (the people and the social, historical and physical environment)
  • describe the need and/or opportunity that the outcome addressed
  • identify the key people who played a role in the design of the outcome, and explain how these people are connected to the outcome
  • explain the main ways in which the outcome and the social and physical environment interacted, and/or continue to interact
  • explain and discuss the impact that these interactions had on society
  • discuss both the successful and the unsuccessful ways in which people, the social and physical environment and the outcome interacted. 

For the most up to date information, teachers should be referring to the latest version of the standards, conditions of assessment and assessment resources on TKI and the moderators reports, clarifications documents and student exemplars on the NZQA website. See links below.

Resources to support student achievement

Assessment resource:

Annotated Exemplars

Last updated March 8, 2022



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