The Hegemonic Behaviorist Cycle

Abstract

Values relating to technology and technology education, I will argue, can either be co-constructed or imposed. A teacher employing behaviourist methodologies in the classroom, for example, will inculcate within students, a prescribed set of values relating to technology. They can do this in many ways. In an industrial arts model of technology education, teachers will lead students towards an understanding of technology as a process of fabricating prescribed artifacts with a view to increasing their industry standard psychomotor skills. This, they will argue, will help students gain useful employment in that field of industry. At the other end of the continuum, but still set within the behaviourist paradigm, the teacher might insist that the genetic modification of food is necessary in order to create more efficient production systems in agriculture, or that the only truly sustainable way of maintaining an electricity supply to meet current demands is by nuclear power. In these models, the teacher as expert provides the correct solutions to the prescribed questions. I will argue that this model forms the basis of what I will call a “hegemonic behaviourist cycle”. By this I mean that inculcation into a behaviourist system will serve to shape the learners’ actions when setting into practice what has been learned. I will begin by considering the way values can be formed in a behaviourist setting. I will then explore how technology education set within a behaviouristic system serves to produce unthinking students. I will then go on to explore a learning paradigm in which the formation of values relating to technology is seen as a social process. I will present an argument, in line with current educational thought, that a need now exists to abandon current behaviourist pedagogies and move towards a more broad based learning environment. This, I will argue, is necessary for the development of more informed attitudes about the impact that new and emerging technologies can have on individuals, societies and the world. Values relating to technology will be seen, in this model, to be co-constructed rather than imposed.