Page 110 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 95

In the standards for which progression has been formulated, the progression is often suggested
by the word “describe” for lower grades and words like “discuss,” “explain,” and “analyse” for
higher grades. However, this is not done consistently, because in some cases we find “explain”
in the lowest level also, and in some cases we find “understand” in the lowest level and
“describe” in a higher level. In the Content/Contexts for the attainment of Assessment
Standards, Learning Outcome 1. Technology, Society and the Environment, for instance, we
find “understanding of the issues of environmental technology” for Grade 10 and “describing of
environmental technology” for Grade 11. One can question what the progression is here. In
general, the differences between levels are often marginal. Evidently, the South African
materials are not quite clear about the use of levels for standards.

In the French Standards we find four levels. Here they are not meant to indicate progression,
however. Instead, they indicate to which level each of the standards has to be mastered. Some
standards only have to be mastered at level 1, others at level 2, and so on. The four levels are
defined as follows: 1. Level of being informed (“knowing what one speaks about”); 2. Level of
being able to express (“being able to talk about it”); 3. Level of application (“being able to do”);
4. Level of methodological mastery (“being able to choose, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate”).
This reminds one vaguely of Bloom’s classic taxonomy, published originally in Handbook on
Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning (McGraw-Hill, 1971). These same
levels are used for all standards. Of course, the practical meaning varies among standards, and
for that reason each description is preceded by a short explanation of what “niveau
d’information,” “niveau d’expression,” “niveau des outils,” and “niveau de la maîtrise
méthodologique” (the four levels, as explained above) mean for that particular standard.

In the Hamburg material, the behavioral terms are to be applied in three domains
(Anforderungsbereiche), which, in fact, represent levels. The first domain is reproduction of
content in the context in which it was learned. The second domain is transfer of the learned
content to a new context. The third domain requires that the learner choose the appropriate
content for a complex problem in a different context from the one in which the content was
learned. This seems to be the “from concrete to abstract” option for progression, as being able to
transfer a concept from one context to another requires knowledge at a higher level of abstraction
than being able to apply knowledge in a single context. Again there is some similarity with
Bloom’s taxonomy. The table of operators (the behavioral terms used to indicate standards)
shows on which level (domain) each standard has to be mastered. Here we see a combination of
using levels for indicating progression (Level II is more demanding than Level I, and Level III is
more demanding than Level II) and for indicating the required level of mastery for each standard.

The U.S. Standards for Technological Literacy clearly are most akin to the South African
standards, which use a combination of approaches to indicate progress. Most of the other non-
U.S. standards are based on a single approach, mostly “from concrete to abstract” or “from
simple to complex.” With the combination of approaches, it is very difficult to consistently
indicate what constitutes progression and to characterize overall progression. It may well be that
in anticipation of these difficulties other countries have abstained from using more than one
approach at a time to indicate progression.

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