Characteristics of technology NT 7-1
Achievement standard 2.8 AS91361
Characteristics of technology focuses on students developing an understanding of technology as intervention by design that is enacted through technological practice that results in technological outcomes. These outcomes are designed to enhance the capability of people and the world in which they live, and may result in both positive and negative impacts. Technologists draw on and generate technological knowledge through collaborations within and across communities and other disciplines. Students will also develop an understanding that technology is historically positioned and inseparable from social and cultural influences and impacts.
Achievement objective: NT 7-1
Students will:
- understand the implications of ongoing contestation and competing priorities for complex and innovative decision making in technological development.
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 field of on-going contestation and why competing priorities arise
- explain how influences and 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.
Progression
Previously at level 6, students will have explored the interdisciplinary nature of technology and how technologists collaborate to create technological outcomes. At level 7, students will progress to demonstrate their ability to critically evaluate technological issues.
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
- provide students with opportunities to discuss technology as a field 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 identify and deal with contestable issues by understanding socio-cultural influences
- socio-cultural influences include such things as: social, cultural, political, environmental, and economic influences, which can be done through understanding the socio-cultural influences on fundamental aspects of technology in a particularly defined setting
- aspects of technology 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 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
- 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.
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Contexts for teaching and learning
A useful resource is the ethical thinking tool section found on the
Science Learning Hub. This resource supports students to explore situations to make decisions regarding what is right or wrong and why.
Explain technology as a discipline of on-going contestation and discuss why competing priorities arise
- Establish all factors that technologists may face and their potential priorities.
- Brainstorm all factors and priorities. Link to existing products that exemplify these priorities and may cause contestation.
- Review designers/technologists such as:
- Victor Papanek – ethical and sustainable design issues. He believed that: "The only important thing about design is how it relates to people." His design products include a remarkable transistor radio made from tin cans that was designed to be produced cheaply in developing countries. He also developed a taxi for the disabled and developed many simple to manufacture products. He was interested in all aspects of design and how they affected people and the environment.
- See the
Papanek Foundation website to explore his work and video sections relating to design
- Chris Bangle – car design and design consultant:
- Peter Jensen fashion design – witty and clever versus wearability of fashion garments:
Identify the conflicts and competing priorities that impacted on these technologists technological practice
Use the
Technology Online: Technologists' practice case studies:
- Find a suitable case study that highlights the competing priorities that the technologist had to deal with. Class discusses the role of practical and functional reasoning in complex decision making. Role play can be an engaging way of presenting these case studies.
Visiting technologist:
- To talk about their own decision-making process to make complex decisions. Answer student's pre-prepared questions that focus on identifying the competing priorities they had to address when developing their product.
Explain how competing priorities have been managed in technological decisions of the past
In class interviews with visiting technologists or Futureintech Ambassador:
- Technologist talks to students about how influences and priorities have been managed in developing their technological outcome(s). Students have pre-prepared questions that focus on describing these influences and priorities. Explain how critical evaluation, informed creativity, and boundary pushing impacts on technological development and public views of technology.
- What are the boundaries that surround your work and how do you push or shape them?
- Brainstorm and discuss with the class, concepts such as the tension between creativity and pay and their role within innovation.
- Critically analyse a range of innovative technological outcomes/developments from the past and present.
Choose a range of innovative technological outcomes. Explore the
TEDtalks videos of developers talking about the development of a product, or case studies on the development process.
Introduce concepts/contexts that deserve critical evaluation
Explore sites such as the following for examples of critical evaluations undertaken by technologists:
Note: Student investigation of selected technological developments can occur in parallel with their own technological practice, or during a concentrated period of in-class time with a major focus on this activity. Sufficient time should be allocated to allow students to gather the breadth and depth of the evidence required to meet the requirements of the standard. Presentation of a report covering this aspect of work for assessment would be an individual task but investigation and exploration could be a group or class activity.
Literacy considerations
Students will need to develop understanding of specialist vocabulary, such as:
- Sociocultural factors such as social, political, environmental, economic, cultural, and spiritual considerations. Refer to the Te Tewa Rewa Bridge Case study.
- Competing priorities: For example, one maybe put ahead of another. Factors (often priorities that can be values based) that are in direct opposition and only one can be accommodated, for example, renewable versus nonrenewable. These could include stakeholder viewpoints, innovation versus social acceptance; expedient practices versus ethically acceptable practices; the use of renewable versus non-renewable resources; budget constraints versus the use of ideal materials; the use of resources of cultural significance in traditional versus contemporary contexts.
- Contestable: That this choice could be challenged as there is more than one view on this, often opinion based; things that could be accommodated in a design together but the priority and importance are different, for example, lightweight material and cost, which one takes preference in decision making.
Students will need to understand how to identify/describe, explain and discuss aspects of:
- a technological development within a field of technology
- fields of technology may include but are not limited to: medical, sporting, communication, textiles, furniture, transport, food and military
- aspects of technological practice could include but are not limited to: establishing a need or opportunity; design decisions and outcome development; resource selection, use and availability; manufacturing/production processes and methods; implementation and evaluation within a social or physical environment; maintenance and disposal issues; ethical, social and moral responsibilities.
Resources to support student achievement
General resources
Assessment for qualifications
The following achievement standard(s) could assess learning outcomes from this learning objective:
- AS91361 Generic technology 2.8: Demonstrate understanding of sociocultural factors, and how competing priorities are managed, in technology
Key messages from the standard
- Allow sufficient time for students to develop the breadth and depth of the evidence required to meet the requirements of the standard. Presentation of a report covering this aspect of work for assessment would be an individual task but investigation and exploration could be a group or class activity. Material and understandings may inform practice or be a separate set of key understandings related to a separate activity.
- When discussing the considerations and limitations that sociocultural factors introduce, you may like to think about: stakeholders in the development work and the outcome being produced; the social and physical environment in which the development work takes place and in which the outcome is to be situated; legal requirements within the workplace and of the outcome and where the outcome will operate; cost restrictions in terms of material selection and equipment availability; resource selection and justification; maintenance and disposal; cultural considerations, which may be relevant to the particular development; ethical, social, and moral responsibilities.
- Approaches to teaching and learning to support student achievement could be that students undertake a separate stand-alone activity or one that is embedded in or linked to their own practice. However, if students are limited by their own practice, solutions and outcomes, they may not reach sufficient depth and breadth and subsequently not achieve the criteria for this standard.
Students are required to critically analyse an innovative technological development. This could be an innovation from the past or the present. Examples that have been successfully used include the development of:
- classroom furniture within the field of furniture
- beds/flow controllers/incubators within the field of medical equipment
- pre-packaged ready to eat meals within the field of food technology
- cladding within the building field
- low-power cellular base stations within the field of mobile communication technology.
Resources to support student achievement
Last updated March 13, 2024
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