Technical Drawing, Spatial Intelligence and CAD in General Education - Justifiability, Needs, Opportunities, Challenges

Technical drawing and graphic communications are an inescapable part of the development of technical creativity as well a part of general technology education. Computer-aided design (CAD) has been developing and used in the industry for almost six decades. For the past thirty years, CAD is gradually included in secondary and higher education, but also in general technology (technical) education in some parts of the world. Various studies have been conducted in this regard, which problematize the use of CAD programs in teaching. However, the former practice of the Croatian system of general and compulsory education did not include the application of these contents in teaching. Current changes in compulsory education in Croatia envisage the compulsory acquisition of digital competences of students, which also encourages the introduction of CAD in general education. This paper analyzes the relationships between technical designing (drawing), spatial intelligence and computer aided design with the aim of considering the justification, possibilities and challenges of introducing such content into the teaching of Technical Culture. Based on the analysis of the results of the research, the meaning of these contents for the development of pupils is discussed, and the possibilities for applying CAD in the course of Technical Culture are presented. In the end, guidance is provided for future research of the using CAD in Technical Culture teaching