Societal Aspects of Technology : The Swedish Lower Secondary School Curricula in International Comparison

The future of humanity depends heavily on the technological decisions and choices we make. To prepare the young generation for participating in these decisions the Swedish school technology curriculum includes study of societal aspects of technology. However, evidence coming from the classroom observations shows that teaching of these aspects is almost absent in lower secondary school (age 13-15-year) technology education in Sweden. In order to give an international perspective on the presence and emphasis on societal aspects of technology a comparative curricular study has been made. The comparison has aimed at describing the corresponding content in the curricula, in which subjects it is found, how it relates to design and making and finally how much flexibility the syllabi offer to the teachers contentwise. The Swedish curriculum has been compared with Norwegian, Finnish and Estonian curricula. The study shows that in Finnish Educational Sloyd and Norwegian Arts and Crafts the societal content is closely linked to design and making. The findings also reveal there are apparent similarities between the content regarding societal aspects of technology in the Estonian, Norwegian and Swedish Technology subjects, but the Swedish content stands out both as the most extensive and the least design related