History of Technology: An Area of Growth in Design Education II

Abstract

The first of these articles (in Studies in Design Education and Craft No.1 0.2 Spring 78) presented the case for majority education in technology through the medium of History of Technology; it was also shown that recent developments in examination syllabuses, at Ordinary, Advanced, and OND levels, offer wide opportunity for craft, design, and history, teachers to broaden their teaching into an area of direct relevance to contemporary technological society. History of Technology, as well as offering a comprehensible, nonquantitative, introduction to the fundamentals of design processes, also provides the key to technology education for the majority of pupils, without restriction to those with special aptitudes in numeracy or craft skills.

Over the last 8 or 9 years we have explored, in the Education Department at Keele, a variety of approaches to technology education for teachers - both in training and in service - and, as quoted in the previous article, have found that History of Technology has proved itself the most popular with all the classes 9f students to undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Department, and has proved itself an asset to teachers seeking employment or promotion.