The Immensity of Technology . . . and the Role of the Individual

Technology is a force that reshapes society, the dominant organizer which fundamentally changes everything. It provides material comforts and benefits but can change social patterns and values. Major innovations are happening simultaneously, stretching biological, mental and social adaptation to the limit. Technological decision making relies on an equal focus on three areas: resources (knowledge and information), expression (skills and practices) and responsibility (values and ethics). Decisions cannot be left to the ‘blackbox’ stage when functioning is effectively hidden from view and the technology has entered our culture. Similarly, participation in decision making cannot be left to a select few but must be the role of every citizen. Ensuring full participation in decisions should form the central role of technology education if it is finally to be recognized as a full member of the ‘general education club’. All students must be able to reflect, develop ethical standards and demonstrate how values are expressed through technology. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Politics of Technological Literacy

Technological literacy has been given official sanction; it is the end of technology education in the United States. For most technology educators, the construct is neutral, and something nobody could be ‘against’. This article situates technological literacy in its ideological context of competitive supremacy and conservative politics. In opposition to a ‘neutral’ notion of this construct, a turn toward critical technological literacy is negotiated. Critical technological literacy represents an overtly political turn toward overcoming forms of power that sustain inequities in the built world. To engage in these politics, it is argued that technology educators will necessarily have to resituate their practice within cultural studies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The planning of technology education for South African schools

One of the recommendations made in the discussion document,A Curriculum Model for Education in South Africa (CUMSA), which was released by the Department of National Education in 1991, is that technology education should be offered for the first nine years of pre-tertiary education as a compulsory subject and for the last three years as an optional subject. This paper aims to locate technology education in the context of the sociopolitical and economic background to education in South Africa and to assess to what extent it meets the emerging aims and needs of education. Further aims are to propose a rationale for the teaching of technology at school level in South Africa, to suggest possible broad aims for the teaching of technology, to outline the nature and character of technology education relevant to the South African situation and to propose a possible methodology for technology education in South Africa. The conclusion is reached that technology education can make an important contribution to South African education if the so-called technological process is the major emphasis as this can be transformative and promote quality education.Dr Piet Ankiewicz (M Sc, D Ed, HED) is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the Rand Afrikaans University. He is responsible for teacher education programmes in the field of Science, and for an M Ed course in technology education. His areas of research include education policy and curriculum development for technology education.     

Working Technologically: Investigations into How Young Children Design and Make During Technology Education

Technology education in the early years in Australia is a newly defined curriculum area. A growing amount of resource development has occurred to support technology teaching in schools. However, only a limited amount of research into technology education for children aged three to eight years has taken place. This paper presents the findings of a pilot study which investigated the planning, making and evaluating activities of children when engaged in technology education whilst in childcare. In particular, young children's ability to design, and then use their design for making was examined.     

Improving Technology Education Research on Cognition

In the United States cognitive research about technology education for the general educational purpose of technological literacy has suffered from a lack of a coherent focus. Certainly, there are studies that have addressed cognition, yet analysts of technology education research have been unable to coordinate their findings in any meaningful way (Streichler 1966; Dyrenfurth & Householder 1979; McCrory 1987; Zuga 1994). There are several persistent problems facing technology educators that contribute to the inability to develop clear interpretations or generalizations of the relationship of cognition and technology education. If some of those problems are identified, then, perhaps, we can address them in order to devise directions and strategies for studying cognition in technology education.     

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.     

企业R＆D商业化能力研究

知识经济的飞速发展凸显出技术创新的重要性，企业R＆D商业化能力作为企业技术创新能力的重要组成部分越来越被人们所重视。本文认为，企业R＆D商业化能力的强弱在很大程度上影响着R＆D投入的收益多少．企业可以从多个层次来改善其R＆D商业化的水平．不同的商业化途径对R＆D的盈利水平亦有着显著影响。企业应该重视其R＆D商业化能力的改善．因为．它为企业在技术创新活动中实现真正意义上的自主提供了必要的资源支持．是企业实现自主创新战略的必然选择。     

基于创新协同理论的大中型工业企业技术创新能力评价研究

在科技高速发展的今天,大中型工业企业该如何提高自身的技术创新能力,使其能够持续、快速、健康地发展,成为一个不可忽视的问题。本文从研发能力、财务能力、协同能力和产出能力四个方面,选取了15个有代表性的评价指标,构建出了基于创新协同的企业技术创新能力评价指标体系。然后搜集了2011年东部和中部十九个省市大中型工业企业的指标数据,运用因子分析法进行综合分析。研究结果表明,我国大中型工业企业技术创新能力呈现出明显的从东部沿海地区向中部地区由高到低的递减分布。     

Technology Education as Solo Activity or Socially Constructed Learning

There is a continuing perception that current educational arrangements for technology education in modern liberal democracies are at odds with its actual delivery in the classroom (Dakers & Doherty 2003). The technè versus poiesis tension (explained later) is one major contributor to this perception. Equally, the practice of transmission versus constructivist pedagogies contributes to the mismatch between policy and practice.This paper will investigate how factors relating to these two contributions affect the delivery of technological education. It will begin by discussing the derivation of the word technology and how its modern incarnation has become not only amorphous, but confusing for technology education, in that the term can be taken to mean production on the one hand or process on the other. It will then explore technology teachers perceptions (and misperceptions) of what constitutes technology education, and discuss why this can lead to confusion. It will further consider how this can affect the pedagogy adopted. It will then examine two pedagogical frameworks which result from teachers perceptions of technology education as either; a process of internalisation of technological skills and functions as representations exclusively within the mind and unique to the individual, thus solo, or; a process of technological skills and functions embedded in sociocultural activity in which cognition is distributed across the internal mind and the external environment. Finally, the paper will offer a framework for the delivery of technology education set within a community of learners paradigm.     

Reflecting on Teacher Development in Technology Education: Implications for Future Programmes

This paper reflects on the outcomes of teacher professional development programmes in technology education. These programmes were based on a model which emphasised the importance of teachers developing an understanding of both technological practice and technology education. Two different programmes have been developed and trialed in the New Zealand context. They are the Facilitator Training programme, and the Technology Teacher Development Resource Package programme. This paper will focus on the outcomes of these programmes. The Facilitator Training programme was a year long programme, and ran in 1995 and 1996. It involved training a total of 30 educators – 15 each year, from all over New Zealand. The Resource Package was trialed in 14 schools over a 3–6 month period in 1996. The evaluations indicate the successful nature of these programmes and the usefulness of the model as a basis for the development of teacher professional development in technology education. The programmes reported on in this paper were developed and evaluated as part of two New Zealand Ministry of Education contracts held by the Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Research. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

GA －BP 神经网络模型在地区工业技术创新能力评价中的应用

针对当前技术创新能力评价方法大多建立在线性模型的基础上,且技术创新能力影响因素较多,可能存在多重共线性的缺陷,本文提出了遗传算法优化的BP神经网络模型。GA－BP神经网络模型在以下几方面做出了改进：①利用了神经网络强大的非线性关系映射能力,避免了传统线性模型的缺陷。②利用遗传算法对评价指标进行了降维,去除了多重共线性。③使用遗传算法从全局搜寻BP神经网络权值和阀值向量,优化了BP神经网络模型,避免了BP神经网络由于使用梯度下降算法,容易陷入局部最优解的缺陷。本文最后选取2008～2013年全国31个省市规模以上工业企业技术创新能力124条数据作为训练样本,31条数据作为测试样本,分别测试遗传算法优化的BP神经网络和未优化的BP神经网络,测试结果显示遗传算法优化的BP神经网络模型预测准确率高于未优化的BP神经网络模型。     

我国技术创新绩效评价与国际比较

本文运用数据包络分析模型对我国1995~2008年技术创新绩效进行评价以及对我国各地区的技术创新绩效进行测评,并将我国技术创新绩效与美国、日本等部分国家进行比较分析,为提高我国技术创新绩效提出了几点建议。     

Value Judgements: Evaluating Design: A Scottish Perspective on a Global Issue

This paper reviews the status of value judgements within Design and Technology education in Scotland in relation to National Guidelines. It highlights consequences for teacher education. These include developing critical awareness, acquiring and assessing information and developing the skills of decision-making and appraisal necessary for discrimination and judgement in the context of an increasingly international arena. The literature suggests that there is little support for the teaching of product appraisal and the evaluative strategies required. Initial teacher education and in-service programmes are being developed to enable teachers to respond to the challenge of this often controversial aspect of Design and Technology. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An Analysis of Student Existing Technological Capability: Developing an Initial Framework

This paper reports on the analysis of student (ages 6–15 years) technological capability as they undertake technological tasks. The activities covered a number of different contexts (including different subject areas), and had differing degrees of openness and methods of presentation. Data was obtained from 261 of the 400 students that took part in the classroom activities. A holistic approach to analysing student performance was developed and this provided insights into the strategies adopted by the students. Some preliminary conclusions are: the focus of students on an end-product meant that they did not fully consider the processes that might be required to solve the problem; student technological approaches were influenced by the culture of the classroom; and existing concepts of technological processes influenced the approaches undertaken. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

消失模涂料概述

介绍了消失模涂料(EPC)的特点、原材料的选择、涂料的配方、制备工艺、性能及使用效果,指出耐火骨料的粒度分布对消失模铸造涂料的透气性有影响,为了得到性能优良的涂料,在配制涂料时应使用粒度集中的耐火骨料,在涂料中加入非离子型或阴离子型表面活性剂,可改善涂料的涂挂性。     

中部崛起的突破口：提升科技创新能力

中部六省如何抓住21世纪头20年的战略机遇期实现中部崛起,在很大程度上取决于是否拥有自己的核心竞争力。因此,大力提升科技创新能力,尤其是自主创新能力,是实现中部崛起的突破口。文章分析了中部地区科技创新能力不强的原因,并在此基础上提出了提升中部地区科技创新能力的对策建议。