Crises in Technology Education in Australia

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Faculty

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

School

School of Education

RAS ID

1094

Comments

Williams, P. J. (2002). Crisis in technology education in Australia. Learning in technology education: Challenges for the 21st Century, 272.

Abstract

After promising initiatives in the last few years, the development of national support for technology education in Australia has stalled. It seemed that there were a number of significant concurrent developments which could positively impact on technology education in the future. At the national level these included a study into the status of technology education, the promotion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Vocational Education and Training (VET), and a range of enterprise initiatives including the Innovation Summit. At the state levels, most states are implementing a contemporary technology education framework or curriculum, and the trend is to make technology education a compulsory lower secondary level subject and to recognise the parity of its contribution as a year 12 subject for university entrance. Significant Commonwealth funding is available for the development of Technology Education but there is no clear idea about what to do with it, despite the obvious problems currently confronting the area. These include an increasing teacher shortage and an ageing teacher population, an ineffectual national professional association, a dissipation of focus on the core technology business, a developing curricular diversity across states and a significant lag in implementing new curricula at the school level for a range of reasons.

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