Technology as a School Subject in
the Indian Context
Beena Choksi, Sugra Chunawala and Chitra Natarajan
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai
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150 million children of school going age,
35 million out of school
• Problems of mismatch
between culture,
educational content
and pedagogy
• Access inequities gender, rural-urban,
sect..
• Worse when subjects
taught through
“universal” frameworks
with no connection to
local context
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Technology in S&T textbook, Class 6
• Technology as application of science
• no making or "doing"
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Summary of current school TE
• TE as
 applied science
 work education
 Vocational/ technical education or
 IT (information technology) education
• Too narrow a view of Technology Education
 ignores design, which is the core of TE
 productivity oriented, not adaptive/ innovative
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Rethinking Technology Education
• Design is central to TE
 link craft and empirical indigenous knowledge;
the natural sciences and the social sciences
• Problem in context – authentic Problem Solving
• Collaborative: teams, users, designers, makers
• Communication and language, multiple
expression modes, quantitative reasoning
• Valid in a variety of classroom contexts
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Design and Technology (D&T)
activities
• Use a variety of skills
• Draw upon key concepts
• Integrate affect (desires,aesthetics) and
judgements (alliances, materials, products)
• Episteme (knowledge) + techné (skill) +
phronesis (practical wisdom)
• Cognition: conceptual, sensory-motor, visualspatial and kinaesthetic (cognition and action)
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Socio-cultural concerns
• Girls and women not well represented in
technology, excluded in TE curricula
• Indian context: indigenous local technologies,
wide urban-rural differences, multi-lingual
classrooms
• Inclusive TE curriculum arrived at by addressing
the nature of activities and its context
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Framework for D&T Education
• Broad goals: (adapted from APU model)
 design, make, evaluate and communicate
technological goals, processes, and products
through collaboration within a complex sociocultural environment
• Groups share goal, common purpose, work as
teams, common practices, tools and language
• Units selected in increasing order of complexity
of tasks and intra and inter group collaboration
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Collaboration and communication centred D&T
education model for the Indian classrooms
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D&T at HBCSE… so far
• Three D&T units:
 bag
 windmill model
 puppets and staging a puppet show
• Trials: Grade VI students in three socio-cultural
and language settings
 urban English and Marathi medium schools
 residential Marathi medium school for tribal
students (rural)
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Three D&T units: Bag
• Product, familiar object of
individual use by boys and
girls,
• Simple design considerations,
• Individual/ team based criteria
for design for individual use
• Needs familiar tools, simple
making skills available among
boys and girls
• Scope to use range of
materials, available resources
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Three D&T units: Windmill model
• Technology as process; product is
multi-component and dynamic
• Complex design considerations
• Team based criteria for design for
community users
• Unfamiliar tools, making skills
• Scope to assemble different
materials
• Community set criteria of
evaluation; use by individuals/ team
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Three D&T units: Making puppet,
staging a show
• Product is object and system, object more
complex than bag (component, dynamic)
• Linked by complex system in production of
puppet and show; social connections
• Collective criteria for show design; team criteria
for product design
• Community judged show and product
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Tasks within each D&T unit:
Motivation and Investigation
• Set context for task, negotiate constraints,
explore language of description, solution
options
• Windmill model: Goal/ problem set through
interactive story
 story, discussion to suit school context
 negotiated goal: working model of windmill to lift
weight
• Exposure to photographs, animations, movie
clips, books, magazines, etc.
 orient to structure, function of windmill
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Exploration of design
• Negotiating design within group, design
description – consists of
 doodling and sketching
 design negotiations; Verbal, non-verbal
 making small scale models of paper, cloth…
 written description of envisaged product
• Results in design drawing – group’s idea of
product (draw, write)
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Technical drawing
• Technical drawing of selected design has
 labels and/ or annotations
 measurements with dimensions and units
 conventions of leaders and arrows
• Resource list – materials, their quantities,
estimated costs, tools
 used to provide resources to each group
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Planning to make
• Step-by-step plan of making using description
and drawing – procedural map
 puppet paper cut-outs made
• Making sub-tasks and
their distribution
e.g. cutting, sewing in
bag and puppet;
fabrication and assembly
in windmill
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Making, evaluation, communication
• Design and plan communication/ justification
before receiving resources
• Making: use design, plan and resources to
collaborate in teams making product; modify
• Evaluation: use criteria to assess own & others’
products and communicate
 critical thinking, language and social skills
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The fun
of making
a windmill
model
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Making, evaluation, communication
• Completed product broadly conforms to design,
often incorporates changes, especially in
complex artefacts
 card paper bag reinforced by cloth
 windmill vane material and shape varied,
assembly design changed, tower modified
 decorative elements on bag and puppet
• Evaluation criteria given + generated
• Communication of evaluation
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Communication
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Stage-wise Model
• Stages of school curriculum, vary across
States:
 pre-primary
 primary (Grades I to IV or V)
 middle or upper primary (Grades V or IV to VIII)
 secondary (Grades IX and X) and
 higher secondary (Grades XI and XII)
• Framework for collaboration and
communication centred D&T education
elaborated stage-wise
• Artefacts, activities, communication issues
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Manifestations of technology at
stages of school curriculum
• Artefact/ object: aspects students will deal with
 materials, process of making, knowledge/
concepts, links with science and society (STS
issues)
• Activities: interactions/ tasks students will
participate in
• Language & communication: outcomes
(debates, ...) & productions (drawings,
writings...)
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Stage 1:
Pre-primary, Primary (to Grade V)
• Artefact/ object:
 locally available materials, their properties
• Activities:
 materials manipulation, use of simple tools,
estimation & measurement
• Language and communication:
 drawings -“reading” & generating, making explicit
the tacit knowledge
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Stage 2 and 3:
Middle school (Grades VI to VIII) &
Secondary school(Grades IX & X)
• Artefact/ object:
 object, model/ process and system
• Activities:
 investigating, designing, planning and making,
evaluating
• Language and communication:
 exploratory sketches, technical drawings,
communication of complex ideas  design
language, community interactions, make STS
links
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Stage 4:
Higher secondary (Grades XI & XII)
• Options of objects and activities
• Artefact/ object:
 study of objects, machines and systems
• Activities:
 survey and analysis projects
• Language and communication:
 critical thinking, community interactions, make
STS links
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Summary
• Proposed model for technology education as
part of general education
• Collaboration and communication at core of
classroom interactions, appropriate for diversity
in Indian contexts
• D&T units with design, planning, making and
evaluation as important constituents
• Stage-wise increase of complexity in activities
within the D&T units
• Integrates skills, processes across domains
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Acknowledgements
• Insights
 Swati Mehrotra
 Ritesh Khunyakari
• Technical help
 Manoj N., Bipin A.
 Technical services
group
• Encouragement
 Arvind Kumar,
HBCSE
 Marc J. de Vries, the
Netherlands
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Vocational/ technical education lofty goals, low status
• Craft-oriented or industrial/ agricultural
production oriented
• Only 1.5% of post-secondary students enrol,
50% drop out, a large fraction "unemployed“
• Paradox: supply falls short of skilled labour
demand
 Lack of coordination between institution and
industry
 Low social status – considered suitable for
academically and/or economically weaker
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Collaboration and cognition
• Piagetian view: individual cognitive
development through resolution of cognitive
conflicts
• Vygotskian perspective: cognition manifest as
changes in participation across different
activities
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Overview of technology
education in school
• National Policy on Education (NPE 1968, 1986)
emphasises technology literacy, education for
work
• S&T education has science; technology
addressed as applications
• Technology can be integrated in other school
subjects; not done
• Work education: 7+ years, recipe-based,
production goals, values & limited skills
• Vocational education, post secondary – lofty
goals, low status, built-in obsolescence
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