Book reviews

Who ever took part in the work of a National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Committee knows the academic rigor that characterizes that process. Some years ago I had the pleasure of experiencing that myself. Still today I remember how rewarding that was from a scholarly point of view. NAE Committees are set a carefully defined challenge and in the past years several of these were educational in nature. Two consecutive committees focused on technological literacy, which has resulted in two reports, Technically Speaking (2002, about defining technological literacy) and Tech Tally (2006, about measuring technological literacy). Although not meant to be scientific publications but rather to be policy supporting documents, these reports are well grounded in research. The same holds for the latest NAE report on education, Engineering in K-12 Education. This document does not focus on technological literacy but on pre-college engineering education as a vehicle for promoting and preparing for engineering education.

The Committee that produced the report was given the following challenges:

These challenges were set in the hope that the following questions could be answered:

Although defined in the USA setting, the report is most certainly of interest to technology educators worldwide, not in the least because of the effort that was spent on identifying what pre-college engineering education is characterized by. The Committee ended up with the following characteristics: (1) the inclusion of engineering design, (2) the explicit use of mathematics, science and technology knowledge and skills and (3) the promotion of habits of mind that are typical for engineering, namely systems thinking, creativity, optimism, collaboration, communication and attention to ethical consideration. Analysis and modeling are no separate entities in this list, but they are mentioned as what (2) is in service of. One might question if this does full justice to the importance of analysis and modeling in engineering, but apart from that the list seems to be a valid and valuable piece of work.

The conclusions in the report are rather embarrassing for educational research as not much seems to be known about the exposure of USA pre-college students to engineering-related content, nor about the effects of this exposure. Personally I was involved in a survey of the non-USA efforts to implement pre-college engineering education and I, too, was disappointed by the lack of data on this. Although no reliable data are available, the Committee’s feeling was that relatively few initiatives for pre-college engineering education exist, both in the USA and worldwide, and those that exist differ substantially in scope and content. The only positive message that comes out is that there seems to be an increase in initiatives, many of which are related to the new trend towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Currently, most STEM is still SteM. The role of technology, and perhaps this holds even more for engineering, is hardly visible. But the Committee sees a positive development here. Another disappointment for the Committee was the lack of reliable data on the effect of pre-college engineering. There is no hard evidence that this type of education does improve performance in science and/or math, that it increases technological literacy, provides a better understanding of what engineers do, or stimulates pupils to opt for a technological career.

Based on its considerations, the committee recommends the following:

I have left unmentioned the specific target groups towards which each of the recommendation is directed by the committee. This is part and parcel of each NAE report, but very USA-specific. I want to emphasize that the report is only USA-specific in a couple of ways, and that the report is definitely of importance for an international readership. The accompanying CD-ROM offers a wealth of information on existing USA initiatives in K-12 engineering education. Congratulations to NAE’s Senior Program Officer Greg Pearson for another valuable contribution to our field. The text of the report was written by freelance writer Robert Pool, whom our readers may know from his book “Beyond Engineering”.

Margarita Pavlova is by no means an unknown author to readers of our journal. Recently she guest-edited a special issue on technology education and sustainability. Sustainability is also the focus of contribution to the UNEVOC/Springer series on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), a series that is edited by Dr. Rupert Maclean, director of UNESCO-UNEVOC in Bonn, Germany. Perhaps the best way to describe the purpose of this book is that it aims at breaking the controversy between general and vocational technology education. Pavlova argues that the aims of technology education for general and for vocational education need not be conflicting. One and the same subject can contribute to the development of technological literacy for all citizens and at the same time offer an orientation and first preparation for a technological study and profession.

In Chap. 1 the author presents an international survey of technology education curricula that she uses to provide evidence for her claim that there is a certain worldwide trend towards ‘vocationalization of schooling’. This may come as a surprise to many readers, but one has to read carefully here. ‘Vocationalization’ in Pavlova’s terms does not mean a focus on low-level skills for craftsmanship, but the new type of personal and social skills that industries demand of today’s professionals. As she shows, the concept of ‘key competencies’, as promoted in, e.g., Germany, brings a certain ‘convergence’ between vocational and general education. Her analysis of technology education curricula in Australia (the country where she lives and works), the UK, the USA and Russia (the country from which she originates) shows that this trend has had a substantial impact on technology education in these countries. In Chap. 2 she continues by describing the values that are at stake in this trend towards ‘vocationalization’. Special attention is paid to moral values, and this, of course, has to do with the main theme of the book, namely sustainability. The author concludes the chapter by remarking that in technology education classes teachers and students mainly deal with instrumental values and that they need to develop appropriate classroom environments that stimulate the recognition of ethically problematic situations. One of the domains where that recognition is important is, of course, sustainability, and that is the issue that is central to the rest of the book.

In Chap. 3 Pavlova offers an account for the concept of sustainability, based on the existing literature. One theoretical perspective is given special attention, namely the concept of the noösphere (“sphere of wisdom”), developed by the Russian scientist Vernadsky to indicate the importance of both life (the “biosphere”) and human consciousness (the “noösphere”) for sustainability. Pavlova confronts the often chosen path of technical fixes for environmental problems with the option of value changes. A choice for that option, of course, must have consequences for technology education. It means that values must have a prominent place there. In Chap. 4 she elaborates that. Relating to the already existing trend to pay explicit attention to design in technology education, she argues for green product design as a new focal point for technology education. In that context also appropriate technologies can be part of the curriculum. Two examples, of from Queensland, Australia, and one from my own country, the Netherlands, are used to illustrate what that might result in. In Chap. 5, the author develops a framework for curriculum development in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). She draws from Habermas (but in fact this goes back to Kant) with his distinction between the theoretical, practical and aesthetical spheres of cultural life, and the distinction of social, environmental and economic contexts in which the aims of these spheres can be realized. In order to develop and realize a curriculum according to that framework, teachers with the right capacities must be educated, and that is what Chap. 6 is about. In this chapter Pavlova presents her own model for a bachelor of technology education program in which social, economic and environmental sustainability are integrated. She is even able to present empirical evidence that an implemented version of that model leads to positive responses by students.

The remaining Chaps. 7–9, present developments in Russia as a case study. Chapter 7 sketches the overall modernization of Russian education as the context for new developments in technology education. Reforms in Russia were, of course, directly related to the important political changes that took place around 1991 when the Soviet Union broke down. Pavlova characterizes the changes a ‘from science-orientation to culture-orientation’. While moving away from the old polytechnic approach in technology education, a new Technology subject/learning area was established in 1993, for which Standards were defined in 1998 and revised in 2004. Chapter 8 describes the position of sustainability in Russian policy with particular attention to the theories on the concept of sustainability that were developed in Russia, such as Vernadsky’s concept of ‘noösphere’. Chapter 9 then directs our attention to sustainability in (technology) education in Russia. It becomes clear that there have been quite a few initiatives, although the author concludes that especially in vocational education, education for sustainable development is not yet widely known.

Although Pavlova’s text is based on good arguments, I still was left with some doubts and questions about the way she pretends vocational and general technology education can be woven together in an almost seamless way. There are real tensions visible in today’s practice, and it would have been worthwhile to address those and to see how they can be overcome. This would have given some more empirical strength to her otherwise theoretically very sound book. Sustainability is an emerging trend in technology education, not in the least because of Pavlova’s own publications, and that is a development that we all should cherish. It may well be that attention for environmental sustainability contributes in an important manner to the sustainability of technology education itself.

Why discuss a book on science education in a technology education research journal? Of course, the quality of the text could be the reason for that. But there is more. Hodson is one of the authors who uses the term ‘science education’ to indicate a subject that entails not only the development of insights into natural phenomena, but also the application of such insights for the development and design of new artifacts, systems and processes, thus bringing together science and technology under the umbrella name of ‘science’. From the very beginning of the book he is very explicit about that. Chapter 1 is about ‘scientific literacy’ and it is striking how much attention is paid to technology. At first Hodson seems to feel the need to differentiate between scientific and technological literacy, but by the end of the chapter he presents a list of scientific literacy components and from that list it appears that he has integrated technological literacy in scientific literacy. This is common practice among science educators, but in this journal, of course, we tend to frown at that. But the book is such a nice survey of all the important themes and issues in science education that it sets a challenge to us in technology education to produce a similar book on our field in which we make clear that there are good reasons to keep technological literacy distinct from scientific literacy. Recently the International Handbook of Research and Development in Technology Education was published (by the same publisher, Sense Publishers) but that book is a collection of different perspectives written by different people. Hodson’s book is a consistent elaboration of his perspective on science education and yet it covers all important aspects. The way the book is structured already reveals the hand of a master. So let us put aside our grievances against bringing technological literacy under the umbrella of scientific literacy and let us see what the author offers for technology educators from a science education perspective.

Having defined scientific literacy in Chap. 1, Hodson continues by discussing what is known about students’ views (Chap. 2) and teachers’ views on the nature of science. That shows the importance Hodson ascribes to having a clear view on the nature of science as a component in scientific literacy. That is a choice we can most certainly appreciate from a technology education perspective, as in a analogous way we have learnt to realize the importance of having a good and balanced view on technology as a long-term goal for teaching about technology. Sometimes I think that in technology education we have even put more emphasis on that than science education traditionally has. Much of science education, still today, is about learning the outcomes of science (Ohm’s law, Boyle’s law and whoever’s law) and not so much about learning what it is to be involved in science as an activity. Hodson clearly wants to show that science education is moving in the right direction and no doubt his hope is that by writing this book this trend will be supported. From Chaps. 2 and 3 we learn that several instruments are available to measure both students’ and teachers’ perspectives on science (and technology is again included in that). Although for technology, too, we have some instruments for measuring students’ and teachers’ perspectives on technology, the comparison with what has already been accomplished in science shows that there is still room for further development in our field.

Both chapters also show that teaching about the nature of science is by no means a luxury, as both students and teachers lack lots of insights in that respect. For that reason, Chap. 4 continues with discussing the way teaching can improve students’ and teachers’ concept of science. Hodson adapts Tyler’s rational curriculum planning model to develop a model for teaching and learning about science. Hodson opts for the metaphor of the teacher as an anthropologist who helps students to move between different worldviews and thus is also able to move into a scientific perspective on the world. Correctly, Hodson notices that this metaphor is not entirely adequate, as science educators, contrary to anthropologists, do interfere with the cultures they study. After all, science teachers do want to change students and help then to become ‘enculturated’ in science. A separate chapter is spent on demarcating science from pseudo-science. Not surprisingly creationism is used as a primary example of the latter, and although I appreciate much of what Hodson writes to show the weaknesses of creationism I do not think he does full justice to the complexity of the demarcation problem. A second domain he discussed is indigenous knowledge and here, too, he does not sufficiently acknowledge the value of direct, comprehensive knowledge about reality and the more abstract and limited knowledge that science provides. It would have been useful, particularly for developing a good insight into the nature of science, to do a bit of demythologizing of science to stimulate more realistic expectations of what sort of knowledge claims science can make.

In Chap. 6 on the substantive structure of science Hodson continues to draw from the philosophy of science and discusses the relationship between data, methods and theories, the realism versus instrumentalism debate, and modeling. While discussing modeling, Hodson takes a turn and moves into teaching and learning again. Chapter 7 then brings us into the realm of science as a process, or, as Hodson calls it, the syntactical structure of science. As in the previous chapter, the author interweaves philosophy of science and educational considerations. For some reason, Hodson does not use the term ‘inquiry-based learning’ in this chapter, although currently it has gains substantially in popularity. Chapter 8 deals with the ‘language’ of science and here Hodson pays attention to argumentation as an important skill in science. This is one of the places where we can see that technology is no longer in the picture, as the author only discusses what is called ‘theoretical reasoning’ (leading to theories) and not practical reasoning (leading to actions), the latter being very important for technology. From ‘language’ to ‘reading, writing and talking’ is a smooth transitions, and that makes Chap. 9 a logical successor of Chap. 8. Much of what is written here goes beyond science education, I think, but nevertheless it is useful to have this chapter in the book. So far the philosophy of science was Hodson’s primary source of inspiration for discussion science education matters. In Chap. 10 he turns to the history of science. Surprisingly, this is one of the shortest chapters in the book, while one could expect it to be one of the largest, given the enormous amount of literature on the topic. The chapter is also less structured than the other chapters. It would have been nice if the author would have identified some major themes and issues in using historical material in science education. Now he limits that to values and presuppositions, which most certainly is a relevant issue.

Throughout the book Hodson draws from existing literature. The book is an impressive survey of a tremendous number of science education books and articles. More than 70 pages of references testify for that. This makes the book a unique resource for anyone who looks for an introduction into science education as a field of scholarly inquiry. In spite of my little grumbles here and there I warmly recommend the book, not only for science educators but for technology educators as well. Even when we believe that technology education is a field of its own right, Hodson’s survey of developments in science education provides a lot of inspirational material. Clearly, Sense Publishers has an excellent network of authors at its disposal. The book can be seen as a sequel to Hodson’s previous book “Towards Scientific Literacy”, also published by Sense Publishers (in 2008).

In 2006 the author of this book published an article in our journal titled “Research on Basic Design Education: An International Survey”. In that article the Boucharenc, an experienced designer himself, provided information about quite a number of design education programs worldwide. In the Introduction of the book the study is briefly described. Evidently, the author had a broad orientation with design education, and therefore it was with great interest that I started reading his book “Design for a Contemporary World”. Although a textbook and not a research publication, the fact that Boucharenc writes from a sound scholarly background in my view justifies a review in our journal. A second justification is that the book offers a wealth of inspiration for educational research on learning design.

In Chap. 1 the author describes the philosophy behind the book. Nearly all of its content is design exercises. The author distinguishes three types of these: discovery exercises (to be found in Chap. 2), analytical exercises (in Chap. 3), and design information exercises (in Chap. 4). In the first type students explore design-related concepts such as rhythm and pattern. In the second type they analyze existing designs. In the third type they learn theoretical and technical knowledge. These types of exercises are presented at three levels: (1) introductory level of relatively low complexity, (2) intermediate level of medium complexity and (3) advanced level of relatively high complexity. Evidently complexity is the distinguishing feature in this progress. That, of course, is a fairly limited perspective, but in the introduction to each of the three sections corresponding to the three levels, the author shows how complexity is related to various other variables that matter. The exercises all begin with learning objectives. The author defines three types, each with three sub-types. The first type is ‘developing individuality’, with as sub-types: developing creativity and originality, developing problem-solving skills, and developing self-confidence and communication skills. The second type of objectives is ‘acquiring knowledge’, with as sub-types structuring basic design elements, mastering the use of two- and three-dimensional tools, and understanding the role of designers in context. The third type is ‘developing planning ability’, with sub-types promoting a methodical approach to work, managing work time, and encouraging teamwork and the division of tasks. For each of the exercises the nine sub-types are spelled out.

The third element of what the author calls the ‘design fundamentals’, next to the learning objectives and the exercises, are the teaching principles. Here, too, he defines three types, each of which again have three sub-types (evidently, all good things come in three here). The first teaching principle is ‘controlling parameters’, with three sub-types: design variables and constraints, economy of means, and time. The second principle is descriptive dimensions, with as sub-types syntactic, pragmatic and semantic dimensions. The third principle is ‘intuitive approach’ with sub-types no copying, no fixed rules and, no fixed forms.

Each of the sets of exercises, presented in Chaps. 2–4, is preceded by an introduction in which the author accounts for the progress in level by showing how attention shifts from one objective to another or how shifts within objectives take place, e.g., by increasing the number of factors that students must take into account. These introductions show that the descriptions of the exercises have been well thought over in terms of what sort of learning they aim at. Each of the exercises ends with a section called ‘Design solution’. In that section we usually find the headings ‘quality criteria’ and ‘links with existing products’. These are meant to help the students evaluate their own solutions against other, existing ones.

In the fifth and final chapter of the book three well-known designers, Toshiyuki Kita, Yrjö Wiherheimo, and Patrick Chia, explain how they have linked the design principles as described in the book to the design of some of their most successful products. This is an interesting chapter as it shows us the ‘hand of the master’. The most prominent principles that reoccur in all case studies are the syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic analyses. It would have been nice if the descriptions had been somewhat more extensive and also had included the other teaching principles. The whole book is very nicely illustrated, as one, of course, could expect from a book about design. In the first lines of this review I suggested that the book gives lots of ideas for research. Let me mention a few examples. Are the levels the author distinguished confirmed by teaching practice? How is the relation between doing the exercises and learning the design principles (when in the process does that learning take place) and how this differ between the three types of exercises? What types of reasoning are needed for the three types of analyses (syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic)? How is the relation between the types of exercises and the various learning objectives? I am sure educational researchers will be able to derive lots of interesting questions from this textbook.