The Aims of Early Technical Education

 

2)   Specific aims of  early technical education

 

We live in an increasingly technological world, where it has become ever more important to be able to deal with technical functions and methods. Even in our pre-school establishments, and certainly during primary school years, staff are expected to be able to meet the increasing expectations of a society that relies on technology in its myriad forms.

 

In pre-school establishments staff need to be enabled to deal with the child's first confrontation with mathematical and scientific phenomena. This leads inevitably to confrontation with technical and technological phenomena. In a child's mind there is no distinction. All are part of the exploratory nature of a child finding out about how the world around about functions.

 

This basic need to understand the world is as basic for girls as it is for boys. And yet in much of the western world there is a tendency for parents and teachers to assume that boys will naturally gravitate towards all things technical and girls will not. Where girls show an interest in and aptitude for science they are channelled (or channel themselves) towards animate science (biology, zoology and biochemistry, medicine, veterinary science) and away from inanimate science (physics, chemistry, engineering, technology). The numbers in training and employment in Western Europe show this to be true across national boundaries, although this was not true of the Soviet bloc from the 1950s to the 1980s.

 

To what degree this is biologically determined, or to what degree socially determined, remains at present unclear. However it is clearly the responsibility of teachers and pre-school staff to ensure that an unthinking acceptance of these norms does not permeate their work. They have a responsibility to respond directly to the instinct of curiosity natural to all children, boys and girls, to understand their world better. Because of their own socialisation (and most such teachers and pre-school staff are of course themselves female) they may have to deal first with their own anxieties, or lack of knowledge or interest. This is likely to be of such importance that gender-specific considerations will need to be made in the training of all women (and perhaps also their male colleagues) entering the profession. We deal with this separately later in this chapter.

 

 

2.1      scientific and technical experiences

 

We believe that all children are naturally curious about their world, and that it is one of the functions of our school and pre-school systems to find ways of channelling this curiosity and turning it into learning. Adults should however not attempt to control or limit these experiences, but should offer space and opportunities to the children in their care, perhaps by creating an experiential space inside or outside their establishments.

 

Children need to make sense of the world. They need to understand the values that underpin their lives and to make decisions accordingly. They need to understand the technical basis of the world and do this best by doing experiments. In this they need active guidance from caregivers in satisfying their curiosity. By experimenting they are actively involved in their own learning processes. Cause and effect are critical components in this learning.

 

Children need to learn what is doable and what is possible. They also need guidance, so that their questions can be answered and possible dangers warned against. Children need to try things out and to create things. "Learning by Doing" should be the basic principle, and the child's own creativity should be harnessed to this end. Trial and error make for cognitive leaps of understanding.

 

Children need to be able to plan and act autonomously. They need to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. At first the caregiver needs to take responsibility for the planning, but the strategy must always be that the children themselves take over the role of autonomous experimenter.  Children should be helped to find for themselves the answers to their questions. This puts the responsibility on the teacher or the pre-school staff to have enough technical knowledge themselves, and to know how much to give to the child to allow him or her to find the answer for themselves.

 

Children must learn to look after materials safely and carefully. In particular this is true of machinery and tools.

 

Children need to be able to communicate their newly-won knowledge and experiences to other children and to key adults. This helps the acquisition of self-awareness and gives opportunities for positive feedback.

 

Children need to widen their verbal abilities and communication skills. Scientific methodology and explanation help to clarify thought processes and communication.

 

Children need to understand relations and correspondences between phenomena. Processes and reactions need to be explored and understood, and the children need to gain trust in their own problem solving skills, their own abilities and their own learning strategies. The more this can be furthered the better the chances are that the child will gain the confidence to try out ever more difficult experiments.

 

Children also need to be able to transfer learning from technical and scientific disciplines into other situations. The child learns from natural laws solutions to other problems, broadens his or her understanding and is able not only to know more but also to widen his or her scope for action.

 

Children need to experience sensory and cognitive stimuli. By directly experiencing materials which they can "grasp" in their hands they also learn to "grasp" in their minds.

 

Children need to learn how to learn. They need to learn how to observe, to compare, to measure, to weigh and so on. They need to engage with natural phenomena and experience causality, so that they actively learn about and can judge the laws of nature.

 

Children need to develop an awareness of the environment, and to learn to take social responsibility based on values and the careful use of resources. They need to take account of the consequences of a technological world. Through their experimenting with technical constructions, they need to learn about potential or actual short-term and longer-term consequences.

 

 

2.2      gender differences

 

There are three prerequisites for staff working in pre-school and primary school settings:

 

1)      they must be able to recognise that boys and girls may be being differently treated in their establishments. They need to be able to put these observations into the context of current knowledge about the differences between the sexes, whether these are biological, physiological or developmental in origin, and make appropriate judgements.

 

2)      they must ensure that boys and girls have equal access to activities of a technical nature. This may mean, in some settings, allowing only girls to use certain materials on certain days of the week, for example.

 

3)      they may need to give explicit help to girls to encourage their interest in technical activities, thereby recognising that some adverse socialisation may already have occurred either at home or in the community, and that this may need a counter-balance.

 

 

Given these basics, the aims for early technical education in respect of gender characteristics are as follows:

 

 

 

Both sexes should be encouraged to follow where their curiosity leads. The teacher may need to pay attention to the child's curiosity towards scientific-technical matters.

 

Both sexes should be holistically supported. Activity and fun are two sides of the same coin.

 

Both sexes should be able to develop their creativity, and experimentation is a key part of this creativity.

 

Both sexes need access to material and tools which they can use and manipulate.

 

Each sex needs to recognise that the other has as much right to technology as they do. There are no "girlish" or "boyish" activities, although boys and girls may indeed use their technical interests and knowledge in different ways, just as individuals may use their knowledge differently.

 

Both sexes need to develop their knowledge of scientific-technical matters in accordance with their age and development.

 

Both sexes need to understand and use their environment better. They need to learn in particular about the following scientific-technical areas of their lives:

 

Fire, water, air, weather

 

Electricity, mechanics, optics, gravity

 

Technology in the household  (common machines)

 

Technology of toys

 

Transport, media, space

 

Use of household tools (eg to put up a shelf)

 

All of these additional aims in respect of gender issues suggest that this aspect of early technical education should be stressed in the training of our young teachers and pre-school staff. We will argue in this handbook for such an emphasis as we believe that there is an issue of equal opportunities here, as well as an issue of not enough consideration being given to early technical education for both sexes.

 

 

 

Michael Geginat

Adrian Greenwood

BBS VII Braunschweig