A SURVEY OF THE STATUS QUO OF EARLY TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN CATALONIA

 

The paper at hand presents the status quo of early technological education in Catalonia by analyzing four aspects:

·       Technology in nursery and primary school curricula.

·       Technology in initial and in-service teacher training.

·       The situation of  research in relation to early technological education.

·       Initiatives for improving  technological education.

·       Methodologies for science and technology education.

 

When we talk about technology in this report, we refer to  all technologies except ICTs, and we reserve the term ICTs  to designate informatics and audiovisual media.

 

1.     Technology and ICTs in nursery and primary school curricula

 

The guidelines for nursery and primary education in Catalonia establish the following curricular areas:

Nursery level (ages 3 to 6)

·       Discovering  oneself

·       Discovering the social and natural environment

·       Communication and language

·       Religion (optional)

Primary level (ages 6 to 12)

·       Catalan, Spanish (and Aranese in Val d’Aran) languages and literatures

·       Foreign language

·       Knowledge of the social and cultural environment

·       Knowledge of the natural environment

·       Music education

·       Visual and plastic arts education

·       Physical Education

• Mathematics
• Religion (optional)

 

1.1.         Technology in the curriculum

According to this scheme,  preschool and primary school curriculums do not include the area of technology. Technology is only a curricular area in compulsory secondary  education (12-16 years old).

 

Although  technology is not an educational area, the guidelines for  curricular design do relate to technology in two respects: they consider a) an STS (Science, Technology and Society) approach for some contents and b) some procedural contents. We can find these contents related to technology  in the Knowledge of natural environment area.

 

What are the future prospects for technology in the curriculum? The last year (2002) saw an exhaustive examination of the Catalan educational system in the National Conference on Education. One of the aims was to work out a proposal on the distribution of basic competences in primary and secondary education. From the conclusions of the debate, we extract the following three general basic competences in the area of Technological processes:

1.     Know why some common chemical products may be dangerous in the  home.

2.     Explain some of the most important changes that take place in nature by using scientific approaches.

3.     To know the basic elements of a machine for accumulating energy, transforming it, and carrying out useful work.

You can see that

this will not involve significant changes in the status of technology in nursery and primary education.  At these educational levels  technology is considered only in relation  to social and natural sciences.

 

1.2.         ICTs in the curriculum

In the curriculum guidelines (1992) the ICTs  did not appear  as a curricular area, but were considered a “transversal axis”. Today, the ICTs have become essential instruments for education and knowledge in this field is considered a basic competence or skill, (perhaps comparable with reading, writing and calculating).

The basic competences in ICTs are also a result of the National Conference on Education. In the next table are the competences expected of children between the ages of 3 to 12 in Technological literacy: 

 

Technological literacy
Nursery	1.     To use the mouse to point and click 2.     To  turn the computer on / off 3.     To use the keyboard / touch screen 4.     To print  by clicking on the printer icon
Initial level	1.     To use the basic peripheral equipment of the computer 2.     To open  and  close an application, to create a new document. 3.      To save and  retrieve a document with the help of the teacher
Middle level	1.     To use menus and advanced controls 2.     To use the computer with security and responsibility   3.     To identify the differences between the use of the hard disk and  floppy disk 4.     To save and  retrieve a document, without the help of the teacher
Higher level	1.     To personalize parts of the system 2.     To identify different types of computers 3.     To understand the need to make backup copies  and be able to make them. 4.     To identify the advantages of working in a local net and of using shared files

 

 

2.     Technology and ICTs in nursery and primary school  teacher training

 

The state of technology in initial teacher-training is not unlike its state in nursery and primary education. The pre- and primary school initial teacher-s training is organized in 6 university degree programmes:

Mestre d’Educació Infantil, general teacher for children aged 3 to 6.

Mestre d’Educació Primaria, general teacher for children aged 6 to 12.

Mestre de Llengües Estrangeres, teacher specializing  in English or French language for children aged 6 to 12.

Mestre d'Educació Física, teacher specializing in physical education for children aged 6 to 12.

Mestre d'Educació Musical, teacher specializing in musical education for children aged 6 to 12.

Mestre d'Educació Especial, teacher specializing in children  with special needs.

 

In all these degree courses, technology education focuses on ICTs. For example, in our university, these curricula have only one compulsory  subject of 4.5 credits: “New technologies applied to education.”  The contents of this subject are informatics and audiovisual media. Nevertheless we can find some technical contents in various courses on the didactics of experimental sciences, and in some optional subjects.

 

The current offers for nursery and primary school teachers in service and related to technology are training units focused on ICTs only.

The Administration offers:

§       Training courses (first and second level) in ICTs at public centers of preschool primary and secondary education.

§       Specific support for teachers concerning the integration of informatics (at pre- and primary school public centres).

§       Training courses in audiovisual media at public centres of preschool and primary education.

 

3.     Research into technical education

 

If we exclude ICTs in educational research from our consideration, the state of research into technical  education in Catalonia is very poor. This is  logical  for several reasons:

-       A didactics of technology as a professional area does not currently exist in the universities and research is a responsibility of universities.

-       The pedagogy departments focus their technical research  on informatics or audiovisual media in education.

-       The didactics of science departments do not regard technical education  as an important line of research, their point of view is, more or less, that technology is applied science.

-       The administration and the general educational model promote only  ICTs.

 

We found only one project at the doctoral degree level on the differences between girls’ and boys’ interest in and concept of technology in secondary schools (Muñoz 1993).

In summary, the author thinks that in Catalonia the differences between boys and girls are similar to those in other countries and that these differences are a direct consequence of social models.

The author explains the great level of confusion concerning the concept of technology because this subject did not exist in the curriculum when this research was  being carried out.

In order to reach equality in the attitudes of both sexes to technology, the author agrees with Marc de Vries (1987) and Falco de Klerk Wolters (1989). They hold that  classes of technological education for girls only should be available and should start in nursery and primary school.

The author also says that technological education obviously has to involve a correct concept of technology. This means that the relationships between technology and society, and between technology and the human being, should receive special consideration in the technological curriculum.

The author points also to the influence of teachers’ attitudes have a strong influence on the students’ attitudes.

 

4.     Initiatives  to  improve  technical education

 

Once more, the initiatives for improvement nursery and primary schools relate only to ICT. In the last 15 years ICTs have been particularly promoted by the Catalan administration. We want here to point out two programmes: the PIE programme, which has  been the motor for implementing information technology in schools, and the Pla Estratègic, Catalunya en Xarxa (1999-2003) [Strategic plan: Catalonia in network], which drew the lines of today’s programmes that promote ICTs.

 

There are several initiatives from other public or private institutions to improve ICT education, e.g. the Grimm Project. This is a research and development project that started in 1994 with the aim of introducing  information and communication technology into an educational framework. The original idea was to introduce computers and multimedia devices in nurseries and to assess  the results from several points of view.  We think that it is important to point out that most GRIMM teachers thought that the project had a positive influence on the students.

 

5.     Didactical considerations about science and technology education

 

Our main purpose here is to present some didactical approaches that are used in Catalonia in scientific and technological education. These approaches can be used as reference in designing activities for the teaching of technology in nursery and primary education. We also wish to emphasize similarities between scientific and technical education in early schooling.

 

5.1.         Didactical methodologies in the area of Technical education

The teaching of technology in secondary education uses some didactical methodologies that are derived from the working methods of technologists. We feel that these could be considered the basis of criteria for the planning of technical education activities at the kindergarten and primary levels. 

·     The method of technical Projects (or project method)

·     Case studies

·     The analysis of objects

 

The project method is probably the most important method. It is based on the perception that a technical problem needs to be solved. The steps of the method are the following: Analysis of the situation and problem definition; Research; Discussion of possible solutions;  Planning; Execution; Evaluation. To these 6 classical steps we can add another: Invention of new situations.

Some pedagogical considerations about this methodology are:

§       The emphasis is put, in the first place, on the pupil considered responsible for his own learning.

§       The teacher is seen here as guiding the personal possibilities of students. At the same time he/she encourages and advises the students during their work on the project.

§       The practice of this method allows the student to visualise what he is going to do, which arouses in him a need to learn. The desire to accomplish something becomes a key element of the student´s motivation, which opens the way for active participation. 

§       The practice of this method makes the students acquire the habit of searching for answers and leads them to apply all their intellectual skills in the activity.

 

Case studies are used to analyse specific episodes of technological innovation and the dynamics of change. This method is often used in the second stage of the project method in order to analyse situations similar to those we aim to solve and thus obtain criteria for the choice of the best solution. The point of view of this global analysis is clearly interdisciplinary.

 

The Analysis of Objects consists of a systematic investigation of all those aspects and elements that determine an object or technical system. In contrast to the project method, we start from the final solution (the object or technical system) and we search for all the factors that have influenced the development of this concrete solution to the problematic initial situation. It is, therefore, a process that goes from the concrete to the abstract and from the specific to the general. It is often used as a method associated with the project method.

Didactically, it has the advantage that when we analyse the object from all possible points of view, we are changing the activity into an interdisciplinary axis.

 

5.2.         Didactical considerations regarding early science education

From a historical perspective, we believe that today the level of early science education in our country is not good. The PISA 2000 report shows this when it places the scientific literacy level of Spain between rank 16 and 22 in a group of 32 countries.

If we take the year 1990 as a reference we can see that technical education has improved and that this trend is continuing at the secondary level of education. However, we cannot say the same about the sciences in early education. Our feeling is that at the beginning of the nineties the situation was more positive; or at least there was more enthusiasm.

In 1990 the Science Museum of Barcelona organized the first Didactics of Science Seminar called El “clik” científic de 3 a 7 anys (The scientific ”click” from age 3 to 7).  This seminar showed that many professionals, from nursery school to university, were interested in early science education.

Since then, the didactic reflections of this seminar have inspired many educational experiments with children in nursery and primary schools. We believe that these didactic considerations may also be a good reference for elaborating the didactic concept of early technical education.

The papers of this seminar were published by the Fundació Caixa de Pensions (1990) and, considering the aim of our project, we would emphasize the following reflections from them:

§       In addition to expressive education, the nursery schools must pay attention to cognitive education. This is so because, between the ages of 3 and 6, children experience an explosion of language and the initial development of the main cognitive strategies. Therefore it is necessary to provide scientific and technical activities.

§       The most important didactic procedure for an early scientific and technical education is to do “research.” Research is here understood as a way of acting that allows the construction of a closer relationship between what the learner is doing and what the learner is thinking. The process of the construction of knowledge can be understood as a continuous adjustment between experience, thinking and language.

§       Interpersonal relationships are essential for the acquisition of scientific literacy.

§        It is necessary to take into account the knowledge and competences that 3-year-old children have acquired, because these are the bases on which scientific literacy will be built.

§       The teacher should act as a mediator (of stimuli, direction, support) in the acquisition of scientific knowledge.

§       The proposed activities should be related with the children’s lives outside the classroom.

 

In our opinion there are many points of contact between this way of understanding scientific education and the didactical methodologies of technological education that we presented above. Both should be borne in mind in the design of activities for early technical education. 

 

Cerveró, J.M.; Cabellos M.; Castells, M.

 

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