Page 119 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

104 STANDARDS FOR K–12 ENGINEERING EDUCATION?

supplemental, technical-oriented technology education program toward an academic, knowledge-
oriented technology/engineering program.

This change was even further removed from the long and productive history of skills
development and tool use. Although individual teachers made progress in making this transition,
and created an initial set of technology/engineering courses in the process, many technology
education staff did not want to make another shift. Thus the implications of the second shift
continue to pose a significant challenge to the systematic implementation of
technology/engineering standards in Massachusetts.

The question has split the state’s technology education organization in two: one side is aligned
more with the industrial arts/technology education perspective and the other is aligned with the
technology/engineering-academic perspective. People watching this process, including school
and district science staff, curriculum coordinators, and administrators, took the split as one
reason to delay the incorporation of technology/engineering concepts into school programs.

Between 1996 and the mid-2000s, science staff and organizations generally did not take
ownership of technology/engineering standards, which they viewed as the responsibility of
technology education teachers. Another reason for delay, not associated with the organizational
events but related to the recent shift away from industrial arts, was that educational staff and
parents were slow to change their conception of past technical-oriented programs and embrace
the possibility of an academic technology/engineering program.

Only recently have more schools and districts begun to transition technology education programs
into their science departments. Those that have often merge the two departments into a “science
and technology/engineering department.” This is due, in part, to several developments. First, the
MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (the Department) has worked over the
years to align all state policies so that technology/engineering is treated the same way all other
science disciplines are treated. This provides schools and districts with the support they need to
develop academic technology/engineering programs. Second, relationships between the two
technology education organizations are starting to heal. And finally, the Boston Museum of
Science (the Museum), with its associated National Center for Technological Literacy, has
become a leader in promoting technology/engineering.

These developments have moved the discipline away from the tensions of organizational strife
and associations with past technical programs. The Museum’s development of
technology/engineering curriculum provided an image for administrators, science staff, and
parents of what a technology/engineering curriculum could look like. It also showed how
technology/engineering concepts were related to more traditional science concepts. In addition to
educating administrators and guidance staff, the curriculum has had a significant impact on the
establishment of technology/engineering programs across the state.
3

3 The National Center for Technological Literacy (NCTL) at the Boston Museum of Science has trained over 750
teachers in the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) curriculum across Massachusetts, where approximately 115
elementary schools are now using EiE. Approximately 60 high schools have purchased the Engineering the Future
(EtF) curriculum. Many high school teachers have participated in training for the EtF curriculum as well (numbers

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