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Processes of Science and Technology: a Rationale for Cooperation Or Separation

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Processes of Science and Technology: a Rationale for Cooperation Or Separation Processes of Science and Technology: A Rationale for Cooperation or Separation P John Williams Edith Cowan University Australia INTRODUCTION There has been much discussion and writing about the relationship between science and technology, resulting in a diversity of views about this relationship, ranging between the antithetical views of technology as science dependent, and at the other end of the spectrum, science as technology dependent. As a technology educator, my concern for clarification between these two areas is that technology generally gets the raw end of the deal when the two are placed together. Almost daily one comes across the terms science and technology in the media and in government reports and policy statements, which more often than not precede a discussion of science, rather than science and technology. Bencze (2001) makes the point that, as a result, science has so co-opted the status of fields of technology that people routinely refer to them as sciences: for example rocket science, medial science and computer science (273). This seems to result in a public misconception about both the relationship between science and technology and the nature of technology, a misconception which extends to educators and education policy makers. The difference between science and technology is important in terms of government policy. For example in Western Australia the government has recently released a policy statement on science and technology (Department of Commerce and Trade, 2000). Two of the outlined strategies to implement the policy parallel each other, one related to improving technology education and the other to improving science education in schools. Funding for science is listed as $500,000, and funding for technology is listed as N/A. The difference is also important in terms of curriculum development - how should the two areas relate to each other in the curriculum? For example in Israel and Brazil, Science and Technology are combined as one subject. In New South Wales, Science and Technology is a single learning area in primary, then separated in secondary. In the United States, one of the seven content standards in the National Standards for Science Education (National Academy of Sciences, 1996) is technology, but the converse, science in the Standards for Technological Literacy (ITEA, 2000), is not the case. What is the rationale for integration or separation? While the relationships between science and technology are undeniably significant, the differences between the two areas are just as important, particularly in terms of the goals of the developing area of technology education. The hypothesis of this paper is that an examination of the methodologies of science and technology will assist in the clarification of technology education and the elevation of its status, and will provide an additional rationale for its independence as a subject in the curriculum. - 33 - TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER LEARNING AREAS There appear to be at least three conceptions of the relationship between technology and other curriculum learning areas. The first sees technology as discrete and separate from other learning areas. The rationale for this approach was clearly enunciated and accepted in Australia in 1994 with the publication of the technology learning area statement. The rationale relates to the unique opportunities the learning area provides students to interact with technology in innovative, ethical and thoughtful ways. This conception of technology as a demarcated (Gardner, 1994) learning area also remains internationally popular (See UK National Curriculum Orders, 1999 and US Standards for Technological Literacy, 2000). The second conception is of technology as part of an integrated study. The Integrated Maths, Science and Technology in Elementary schools Project (Hacker, 1996) in New York State has been working for some years trialing integrated learning activities in mathematics, science and technology. This project is well funded and there may be some question as to the viability of the concept without the specific funding. Hacker (1996) argues that for primary level education, not only is it possible to integrate science and technology, but that there is a strong logic for including mathematics as well. However a review of the teaching of Science and Technology in NSW primary schools in 1995 indicated that the integrity of technology education was severely compromised (Science and Technology Syllabus Evaluation, 1995) by this approach. The third conception (Solomon, 1994) is of technology providing the basis for integrated activities, where students will learn about, for example, mathematical concepts and language through engaging in meaningful design activities, that require knowledge from a range of areas in addition to technology. This could be taken to be the same as integrated technology. However, the difference is that the activity or project is technological, and the mathematical concepts and language development emanate from this technological activity. The link between technology and science has been addressed by many authors (Harrison, 1994; Gardner, 1994; Hacker, 1996; Williams, 1998; Raudebaugh, 2000). Harrison saw science and technology as two disciplines which need to be treated separately to ensure the important learning in each is covered. However, Harrison pointed out that it is also inevitable that technology education will include science, and science include technology. Raudebaugh (2000) presented the results of a project intended to supplement science coursework through the development, by students, of technological products. Williams (1998) argued that the differences between science and technology (differences in method, aims, use of knowledge and type of knowledge) are fundamentally significant enough to teach them seperately. Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science" (Goodman, in Postman, 1995, vi) It may sound confusing rather than clarifying, but technology has been aptly described as the liberal arts of the sciences, the unifying discipline because it spans so many areas. The distinctions between science and the liberal arts are sharp, but technology in fact has more in - 34 - common with the humanities. The humanities (and technology) are generally concerned with questions of quality and value rather than with quantitative methodology. Sir Eric Ashby (1958) elaborates on this relationship in his book Technology and the Academics: 'Technology is inseparable from men and communities. In this respect, technology differs from pure science. It is the essence of the scientific method that the human element must be eliminated. Science does not dispense with values but it does eliminate the variability of human response to values. Unlike science, technology concerns the application of science to the needs of man and society, therefore technology is inseparable from humanism'. Consequently the Technology learning area has strong conceptual links with other learning areas such as Society and Environment and English. ASSUMPTIONS In a desire not to revisit debates which have previously been authoritatively dealt with, I would like to make a number of assumptions. 1. Technology is not applied science. Gardner (1994, 1995) deals with this perception of technology in detail, and concludes by rejecting it as historically unsound and simplistic. Technology is more than the application of scientific knowledge and principles, ‘it is a knowledge of techniques, methods and designs that work, and that work in certain ways and with certain consequences, even when one cannot explain exactly why. It is a form of knowledge which has generated a certain rate of economic progress for thousands of years. Indeed if the human race had been confined to technologies that were understood in a scientific sense, it would have passed from the scene long ago’ (Rosenberg, 1982, 143). 2. Which comes first is an unresolvable question. In a historical sense, technology was an element of human activity long before science was established. In an incidental sense, there is no general agreement. Layton in his book ‘Technology’s challenge to science education’ (Layton, 1993, 25) gives two examples to illustrate this. The first was the USA Defence Department’s Project Hindsight which analysed 20 weapons systems adopted by the armed forces since the end of the war. Each system was broken down into innovative events in development. Out of 700 such events, only two appeared to be derived from basic scientific research. Ninety percent of the remainder were classified as technological. In response to this finding, a National Science Foundation funded study at the Illinois Institute for Technology explored five ‘high tech’ innovations including the contraceptive pill, the electron microscope and video tape recording. The resulting report claimed that 70 percent of all the critical events in the development of the artefacts came from basic science. 3. Science and technology are different. Many writers (Hindel, 1966; Skolimowski, 1966; Mackenzie and Waejman, 1985; Lauda, 1985; Sparks, 1987; Narin and Olivastrrro, 1992; Gardner, 1994; Williams,A., 1996) have utilized various notions to contrast science and technology. These include: Goals: the pursuit of knowledge vs the creations of solutions Focus: analytical vs practical - 35 - Knowledge: production (abstract, general) vs transformation (detailed and functional) Success: better theories of understanding vs better
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