Technology as a challenge for school curricula

This report discusses problems emerging at the crossroads between,on the one hand, technology in its traditional sense – with its rootsin modernisation, industrialisation and the development of products andprocesses – and, on the other, a wider postmodern definition oftechnology as ways of designing and creating environments, taking intoaccount their various consequences for the future development of oursocieties. Technology in this latter sense is no longer looked upon simplyas a hope; it is also seen as a threat in itself because of its role, forinstance, in military operations and environmental problems. Largescaletechnologies result in large-scale consequences. Thus technologyenters into the field of ethics – where it sometimes challenges establishedpositions.A wider definition of technology also embraces the very acts ofcreating, designing and forming – seen both in relation to physical andvirtual artefacts and in relation to new models of thinking and understanding.Technology in this sense puts new demands on teachers andstudents. They must not only achieve an understanding of technology initself but also gain insights into its historical, cultural and social rootsand foundations.The articles in this report were presented at two International ResearchSeminars in 2002, the first in Stockholm, Sweden and the secondin Krakow, Poland