TEEAP News

Submitted By: Dr. Peter Wright

Pennsylvania has one of the strongest technology education systems of any state in the USA.  We are treated as a required general education subject allied with science.  We are required at the middle school level and our subject must be offered at the high school level although it is not requirement for all students.

It took many years and much effort for our Technology Education Advisor to achieve the move off of the vocational floor at PDE and onto the floor where the other general education programs are housed and to get us accepted as part of Science and Technology  and to be part of the future PSSA tests.  Through the efforts of many people, our goal of being a required general education subject for all students has to some extent been realized.  We have partially escaped the pre-vocational trap of being considered only useful for certain students.  The push for technological literacy for all has been rewarded in our state.

While people do have a positive view of engineering, they also view it as an occupation for the top quarter of students.  We use the phrase “to engineer something”, but most of the public views “engineering” as a noun tied to a vocation.  In fact, collegiate engineering education is typified by higher and higher levels of math knowledge (Calculus 1-4) being applied theoretically to physical systems.  If we change our name and claim to represent both Technology Education and Engineering Education we must be ready to answer many questions.  Are these Technology Education and Engineering Education the same thing or is Engineering Education for the top quarter of all students?  Would Technology Education teachers and Engineering Education teachers need the same skills and preparation or should Engineering Education teachers be required to have at least taken one calculus course?  Many other questions and impacts would arise.
 
The engineering societies that are interested in K-12 Education are focused on increasing the supply of engineers in this country.  This is a worthy goal for us no matter what our name is.   However, by adding the name of this vocation to our discipline name, we risk having a vocational engineering track for the top students and a general low-status technology track for all of the others.  If this happens, it will be hard to claim that the study of technology is a general education subject that all students should take.  Names are important and they send out multiple messages both positive and negative.

Some other reasons I believe it is a mistake to add the word “engineering” to the name of our association and discipline are the following.

• Loss of communication content to English, drama, and art
  More and more of our teachers are being told that the art department should teach digital photography and the English or drama teachers should teach video production.  Adding “engineering” to our name could make this problem even worse as we will be viewed most often as materials processing.
• Loss of claim to be an academic discipline
  An academic discipline has a unified body of content that can be delineated.  Math. English, and science are academic disciplines and required general education subjects.  Technology is an academic discipline (and so is engineering) but “technology and engineering” is not.  It is like “math and accounting” and may be viewed as more of an elective than a necessity like Family and Consumer Sciences.
• Simplicity lost
  Try saying “Technology and Engineering Education Association of Pennsylvania (TEEAP)” and then explain it to someone.  Any longer association name would cause the same problem.  The simpler and shorter a name is, the better.  All required general education subjects have one word names like math, English and science.  Biology is taught under the umbrella of science just as engineering content should be taught under the umbrella of technology.
• Loss of logical name
  Adding a name (engineering) that is part of the content area of technology so that we sound like we are trying to have “Math and Accounting” declared a general education subject or “English and Journalism”

And as discussed above –

• Addition of the name of a vocation to our general education subject
  Adding the name that the public views as a job category to what should be a required general education subject is a mistake. If we are not aiming to have the study of technology required for all students, then what are we trying to achieve?  Adding the name of an occupation to our subject area further blurs this line and gives ammunition to those who say we should only be for students who desire technical careers.

I believe we should keep our field of study focused on “Technology” as a subject that all students in today’s modern world should take every year.  We can actively position ourselves as the home of the T and E in STEM and individual schools and programs can call themselves whatever they want and use the word engineering as often as they wish.  I just believe that the name of the field (the subject) should remain “Technology” and that we will risk losing the progress we have made and blurring our message by trying to add something else just because a word is currently popular.

One marketing message might be something like the following.

• Technology Education: The home of applied math in the schools
• Technology Education: The home of STEM in the schools
• Technology Education: The home of manufacturing in the schools
• Technology Education: The home of video production technology in the schools
• Technology Education: The home of engineering in the schools

And so on, keep the slogan but keep adding items that we are the home of.

If we must change the name, how about changing it to something that mirrors PA math and science associations and more clearly communicates who we are such as something like the following – Pennsylvania Association of Technology Teachers (PATT).

UPDATE 02/26/2010: Comments have been closed for this thread, please feel free to continue the discussion on the Survey Results thread above.