Designing education for life on earth

Designing, viewed broadly as the human capacity to link thought and action, has meaning and value in the world that transcends its material associations. Given the nature and urgency of current socioeconomic and ecological problems, the creative, generative concept of design must be made more accessible and useful. Accordingly, my intent is to dispel prevailing, narrow, specialist impressions of design and to advance in the public mind a larger concept that can influence deliberations and behavior in society-at-large. One of today's most critical areas of need, and one where I think design can make a particularly significant contribution, is education. A critical task for such design-based education is enabling people to design an ecologically and economically sustainable future.     

Literacy,technology and ‘technological literacy’

The shortcomings of the technological literacy metaphor are reviewed. The lack of an agreed meaning for this concept reflects a widespread perplexity about how the study of technology should be incorporated into general education. The paper considers how the study of literature and history might contribute to an understanding of technology and posits a framework which permits the study of the made world to be incorporated within a humanistic educational scheme. It is suggested that the historical study of technologies of literacy could play a significant role in curricular integration.Based on a Plenary Address to the second Domains of Literacy Conference:Literacies for a Productive Future Institute of Education London 1/9/94Michael Barnett has been, since 1992, Professor of Technology and Education at the Institute of Education in London University. Prior to that he was Reader in Physics at Imperial College London. His main scholarly activities are concerned with the history, philosophy and sociology of technology and their bearing on educational practice. He has established an MA programme in Technology and Education which reflects these concerns.     

The relationship between technology and science: Some historical and philosophical reflections. Part I

This essay offers a detailed review of the literature on the relationship between technology and science. It is in two parts. Part I begins by describing science and technology, and the differences between them. It then discusses the commonly-held technology-as-applied-science (TAS) view; the origins of this view, the support for it, and the strong historical and philosophical challenges to it, beginning more than half a century ago, are explored. The development of the steam engine is then offered as a brief case study to illustrate that science-technology relations are more complex than implied by the TAS view. Part I concludes with a consideration of ontological arguments supporting the reverse view, namely that technology is often a necessary precursor to science.Part II, to be published in a following issue, explores some of the consequences of the TAS view. One consequence is that it has generated a story-line in which scientific ideas are emphasised and other factors necessary for technological innovation have been down-played. Another consequence is that, even in cases where technology does apply scientific knowledge, the process of application is often considered obvious; the difficulties of translating ideas into artefacts may not be appreciated. The essay argues for the telling of a more complex story of science-technology relations, one which recognises their historical independence in the past, and their mutual, two-way interaction in many modern fields of endeavour. It concludes with a consideration of some economic and educational implications.     

Tradeable permits,missing markets,and technology

This paper examines the effects of missing markets, heterogeneous pollutants, and the pollution technology of firms on the efficacy of transferable pollution permits. Under the assumption of perfect competition in all markets, we show that if firms can substitute among pollutants, then setting the optimal number of permits for only one pollutant will not, in general, lead to an efficient outcome. The degree of the inefficiency will depend on the information set available to the regulator and the substitutability among pollutants by firms. When establishing transferable pollution rights regulators should, therefore, consider the technology of firms. If firms discharge pollutants in the same fixed proportions, then the regulator need only set a market for one of the pollutants to ensure an efficient outcome. Where firms can substitute among pollutants, however, establishing a market for only one pollutant provides an incentive for firms to substitute to unregulated ones. This is an important policy issue as substitutability among pollutants within and across production processes may dampen the dynamic advantages of a tradeable permit policy.     

Transfer sciences: management of distributed knowledge production

This paper is concerned to develop the notion of transfer science to take account of what is perceived to be the emergence of a new mode of knowledge production. The new mode which is characterised by the production of knowledge in the context of application, by transdisciplinarity, by homogeneity and organisational diversity, by enhanced social accountability and reflexivity, and by new forms of quality control. The thrust of the new mode of knowledge production is to call into question conventional notions of knowledge transfer and focuses instead on the organisational and managerial implications of the emergence of a socially distributed knowledge production system. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the policy implications of the emergence of the new mode of production. Needed in the new mode are science and technology policies which promote institutional permeability and policies which enable governments, acting through their civil service to act as brokers in the new knowledge production process. Such brokerage is necessary to enhance permeability between institutions within a particular country but also to increase co-operation and collaboration between institutions across countries.     

Problem-solving in teaching/learning packages for Technology

In the project Technology in Secondary Education: Problem-solving in Teaching/learning Packages, two experiments regarding a construction problem and an explanation problem were conducted, in which two variants of a teching/learning package (strongly structuredvs. weakly structured) were compared. Only with the strongly structured instructional variant of the package for the explanation problem did the pupils come to a quick solution of the problem. In both experiments, the factors that influenced the problem-solving processes of the pupils were investigated. The results are of importance for curriculum developers and the authors of teaching/learning packages for Technology but further research into the factors influencing the problem solving process of pupils is necessary.     

论我国税收激励制度的完善

税收激励主要通过收益调节、现金流量的可获性和风险分担这三种方式发挥其作用。我国目前的税收激励的主要不足在于，缺乏一种系统的、一以贯之的政策取向。从知识经济的大背景看，完善我国的税收激励制度应紧紧围绕促进科技创新这一主线来进行。     

信息技术对竞争景框的影响--对波特观点的完善与修正

在分析信息技术对企业的影响时，波特教授对竞争景框变化的论述并不全面和完全正确。不全面在于，他只述及信息技术对地理景框和产业景框的影响，没有提到另两个方面——细分景框和纵向景框的变化。不正确在于，他笼统地提竞争景框的扩大或缩小，而竞争景框四方面在外力作用下变化并不总是一致的。本文认为，在信息技术影响下，竞争景框发生了四个方面不同的变化：细分景框、产业景框和纵向景框三个方面是缩小的，地理景框是扩大的。     

建筑物整体平移新技术施工中的质量管理和工期管理

新技术建筑工程往往没有相应的设计和施工技术规范，在施工中如何进行质量管理和工期管理是一个崭新的课题。本结合建筑物整体平移工程施工中的管理经验，简单讨论了新技术建筑工程施工的特点和质量管理和工期管理。     

Pragmatism, Pedagogy and Philosophy A Model of Thought and Action in Action in Primary Technology and Science Teacher Education

This article reports on one outcome from a three-year study with pre-service primary teachers at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the influence of participants' prior educational experience and beliefs about the relationship between design & technology (D&T) and science on their lesson planning for these subjects during school placements. Data from the study support a three-domain model of pre-service teachers' thinking and action. When operating within the pragmatic domain, participants are primarily concerned with survival in the classroom, resulting in short-term planning which may contradict their epistemological and curricular beliefs. In the pedagogical domain, the focus shifts from the pre-service teacher themselves and their immediate survival to the learning potential of the activities they plan. There is evidence that some participants have progressed to operating within a philosophical domain, leading to clasroom practice which reflects and re-conceptualises pre-service teachers' core beliefs about the nature of, and relationship between, D&T and science. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.