Technical Literacy Research Articles

The IRI Medalist's Address: Room for Whom at the Top? Promoting Technical Literacy in the Executive Suite

(1993). The IRI Medalist's Address: Room for Whom at the Top? Promoting Technical Literacy in the Executive Suite. Research-Technology Management: Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 27-32.

The Technology/Education Interface: STES Education for All

Most people see technology as the know-how and the creativity to use tools, resources, and systems to solve problems and to enhance control over natural and man-made environments to improve the human condition. Three major implications follow from this view: technology is good and all kinds of technological development are desirable; anything that facilitates technological advancement should be encouraged; and education should impart the technical training and skills required by the technological enterprise. Does any technological development necessarily improve our quality of life? What are the trade-offs of any implemented new technology? Should a particular technology be implemented in the first place? Such questions commonly are not dealt with in traditional science education. In ordering priorities and goals, after all, one implies value judgments. But such judgments should be encouraged and fostered in technology education, and this means distinguishing between technical literacy (having the practical ability to handle or use the stuff') and being technologically literate (having the capacity to critically assess technology, as a basis for rational decision making and action). Although science and technology may establish what can technically be done, neither can tell us what should be done (Zoller & Watson, 1974). The crucial problem is not the technical aspects of handling and processing information, but rather the reasoned ability to select and to interpret critically available information. This is the deep-rooted rationale for science-technology-society (STS) education (Aikenhead, 1989; Bybee, 1987; Science Council of Canada, 1984; Yager, 1985; Zoller, 1987b). Those advocating the STS theme across the curriculum believe technology literacy is the combined functional capability to understand and communicate the interactions among science, technology, and society; to assess technology; and to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. STS should, thus, be mandatory for every student.

Towards an optimum language data model

Maximizing the satisfaction of a value in an engineering design is usually limited by tradeoffs in which other values become unacceptably sacrificed. In a few cases, however, the maximization is limited by a boundary between what is mathematically possible and what is not. Round wheels, vertical pillars, and binary memory elements are examples of optimum engineering structures which result from such mathematical limits. It is proposed that optimum characteristics of a language data model result similarly by minimizing the variety of primitive data objects, the complexity of those objects, and the number of objects needed to represent data states. Reducing these measures is needed to combine both rich data structure and powerful operations in one language. The minimizations lead to a narrow range of designs for language semantics in which the potential advantages of specialization is small compared with the advantages of commonality. Universal language for support of technical literacy appears to be an appropriate scope of generality in language design.

Technology, Literacy, and Early Industrial Expansion in the United States

In the early nineteenth century educators interested in the mechanized basis for American manufacturing began experiment with and institutionalize, in mechanics' institutes and the periodic press, an alternative form of literacy based on a knowledge of mechanics and the material culture of manufacturing. This technical literacy was built along three basic dimensions: the relationships between mechanical knowledge and manufacturing; the linkages among the schemata for technical, liberal, and scientific learning; and the dissemination of technical knowledge in various media.1 In their attempts join the experience of the workshop with formal learning, educators were forced recognize that technical and scientific learning involved a dialogue between material culture and a culture of print. This recognition also led them rethink their assumptions about the transfer of technical knowledge and how the structure of that knowledge related (1) the structure of work and machines and (2) mathematical and scientific knowledge. The learning, expression, and use of technical information had two basic elements. The first was traditional language, which was closely allied with what most people call literacy-including skills associated with word recognition, syntax, diction, and grammar; the social and cultural values associated with being literate; and the abilities to bring the appropriate background knowledge bear on the and imagine a state of affairs of which that text would be taken as a true

Cast-Off Youth: Policy and Training Methods from the Military Experience

List of Tables List of Figures Preface Cast-off Youth Part I: Employing the Unemployable Mental Standards in the Military The Low-Aptitude Soldier in World War II and the Korean Conflict Vietnam and Project 100,000 The All-Volunteer Force and the ASVAB Miscalibration Cast-off Youth in Perspective Part II: The Functional-Context Training Approach Military Strategies for Using Low-Aptitude Personnel Functional-Context Technical Training Functional-Context Literacy Training Part III: Developing an Experimental Functional-Context Training Curriculum Survey of Electronics Training Programs and the Electronics Industry A Functional-Context Training Electronics Technician's Course Cast-off Youth: Summary and Recommendations Appendix: Mental Quality and Military Service: An Interview with Robert S. McNamara References Author Index Subject Index About the Authors

Technical Literacy versus Critical Literacy in Adult Basic Education

The demands placed upon Adult Basic Education programs in the United States are more rigorous and involve more people than ever before in our history. Government-supported programs as well as private ones capture in microcosm the best and worst in American education. Literacy education is modeled along a continuum moving from a technical conception of literacy, wherein students mark progress by numbers of completed worksheets, to a conception of literacy as praxis, or critical literacy, wherein students construct meaning for themselves and effect change in their lives. These competing models are contrasted, and special emphasis is given to one adult basic literacy organization that is managing to humanize the process. In this program founded in 1973, the students' own words demonstrate the liberating nature of literacy learning that puts into practice the best of current understandings in the field. The challenge of the next decades demands a critical literacy that is consistent with participatory democracy. The convergence of social learning theories, process teaching, critical consciousness, and adult literacy offers constructive responses to the epidemic incidence of illiteracy in our society.

Education for a technological age

The flood of new technology arising from the revolutions in microelectronics and microbiology has created a significant demand for quality and flexibility in the current and future workforce. The information-based technological changes that society is undergoing will have profound effects on education. This article examines such effects, which will include reexamination of core curricula, revisions to technical education programmes, growing emphasis on technical literacy and significant shifts in the education system.

Television and Technical Literacy

Television and Technical Literacy

Biomedical Engineering Course Development for Health Care Delivery

A new program of courses in biomedical engineering has been initiated at Michigan Technological University, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. The rationale for the development of these courses stems from the rapid growth in technology which has permeated almost all areas of health care delivery. The major goals of each course are described in terms of 1) establishing a required level of technical competence and literacy in the field, 2) developing those communication skills that will typically be required of the students after graduation, and 3) developing a sense of challenge which will last the students beyond their formative years. The philosophy underlying the choice of topical content, course organization, and student evaluation are all considered within the broader framework of establishing a modern foundation which the student, as well as the industrial and clinical community, can readily appreciate and identify with.

Scientific and Technical Literacy

(1954). Scientific and Technical Literacy. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 25, No. 9, pp. 475-478.