Personal Career Exploration and Vocation: develop
human potential for responsible work, leisure,
and citizenship roles in a technological
society.
* Goals are taken from Technical Foundation of America (undated)
curriculum guide.
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Contemporary technology education goals relate to all of the curriculum designs. It is particularly interesting to note that three of the goals relate either directly or indirectly to the social design, demonstrating an increased emphasis on the importance of this curriculum design to technology education. Moreover, the statements appear to reflect the social reconstruction viewpoint of the social design rather than the social adaptation viewpoint of that design. This appears to be a major shift in the orientation of technology education. The orientation of technology education goals could provide much direction for curriculum planning if teachers were given adequate information about how to distinguish and implement a variety of curriculum designs. If teachers receive little guidance and information or receive only information about a technical curriculum design, then curriculum plans will reflect a technical approach and will revert to skill development as the primary activity in the classroom.
The diversity of technology education goals and their relationship to the various curriculum designs leads to the conclusion that there are many ways to proceed with curriculum planning in technology education. Historically, variations of two major curriculum designs have been prescribed most often in the literature - the technical and the academic designs. Recent changes in technology education goals may require a reconceptualization of curriculum planning theory for technology educators.
Planning Curriculum in Industrial Arts and Technology Education
Curriculum designs can also be used to diagnose the advice that technology educators give about how to select content and plan curriculum for the field. As a review of historical and contemporary curriculum advice, authors' ideas are categorized and discussed according to the curriculum designs (see Table 4). Early textbooks were used for the historical review of curriculum planning prescriptions and, because of the lack of a current professional textbook about planning curriculum in technology education, journal articles and yearbook chapters from technology education sources are used for contemporary prescriptions.