Mastering the Essentials for a Career in Technology Education: Over 60% of the Annual Growth in Our Nation's Economy Is Directly Attributable to Scientific and Technological Advances (2005)

Prologue In this article, I shall endeavor to set an ideal, a personal wish list if you will, for what I believe are key areas of competency young technology education teachers should be developing while still in college. Not being an educator in traditional sense, I write from perspective of an engineer and inventor who has spent considerable time interacting with educational community. In this paper, I profess by default to be a member of the tech ed school of hard knocks and a long-time devotee of tech ed principles and practices. I hope you find my thoughts both relevant and challenging, appreciating perspective from which they originate. The Wish List There is no priority or preference inherent in this listing of preferred competencies. They are requisites I have personally compiled over years based on my experiences. I have tried to group them for convenience. Some Basics for Action: Definitions and Distinctions Being able to clearly draw distinctions between definitions of science, technology, and engineering would be ideal. Our society often blurs lines between these important terms. Tech ed teachers should see clearly distinctions. Science is about discovery, while engineering is about application in real world. Technology is know-how to make what we want from what we have (resources) and is main creative tool of engineer. Engineering and tech ed share much common ground--the human designed world--achieved in a benign, beneficial, and cost-effective manner. Most definitely, links to engineering must be brought into tech ed classroom. Because of close relationship that tech ed has with engineering, would-be tech ed teachers should have some form of interaction with working engineers as well as a sense of their profession and problem-solving regimen used by engineers in their daily work. A study of history of engineering and its roots in ancient times would be of significant value. Most, if not all, of seven wonders of ancient world were largely engineering feats. Students should be familiar with great engineers of world and their contributions. The first man on moon was an aeronautical engineer! Five U.S. presidents were engineers (can you name them?). It is highly likely that a good portion of students that tomorrow's tech ed teachers influence will become engineers, and best that engineering be discussed at K-12 level. It is also imperative that tech ed teachers fully understand that technology long preceded science. There are thousands of years of successful tool-making behind such a premise; but formal science as we recognize it today is a mere 500 years old. Technology is mortar between bricks of science, empirical glue that holds structure together. Good Communications The basis of all academic, and eventually corporate performance, is good communication. This bedrock skill set comes in both oral and written form and should span gamut from short thematic writing to a fully researched project paper complete with formal footnotes, references, and bibliography, to development and presentation of original work via formal slide formats followed by Q&A. Ideally, I would also recommend that tech ed career aspirants be able to respond to extemporaneous speaking challenges too. A powerful way to drive this message home to would-be tech ed teachers is to grade their work twice, once for its technical rigor and once for its communications clarity. That would do trick of reinforcing importance of good communications. All tech ed teachers should have numerous opportunities during their undergraduate experience to participate in and lead team problem-solving exercises. It is important to gain extensive experience with how this powerful educational tool should be used in classroom. …