Technology and the key competencies

Critical and creative thinking are vital in technology, as is a high level of awareness about the thinking that underpins any decision. Being able to step back from situations and answer questions demands increasingly sophisticated thinking skills. Questions such as: 

• What is happening?  
• Why is it happening?  
• Should it be happening? 
• How could it be done differently? 

Across all three strands of technology, it is students’ thinking skills that enable them to make informed decisions based on ethical as well as functional grounds, that underpin their understanding of fitness for purpose, and that enable the fitness of an outcome for any specific purpose to be assessed. 

Opportunities for enhancing the development of thinking present themselves when: 

• Undertaking technological practice that requires innovative problem solving. 

A monitoring system for the Orokonui Ecosanctuary: Year 13 student William Satterthwaite had to solve multiple problems including understanding the socio-cultural needs of the main stakeholders, the volunteers. 

• Exploring: (nature of technology) existing technological outcomes or developments, debating contentious issues, or projecting into alternative scenarios. 

Exploring food packaging: Year 6 students at Columbia College explored multiple materials and packaging, including tītī/muttonbird storage. They started to think about whether the materials were technically feasible and socially acceptable. 

• Developing the technological knowledge necessary for evaluating within a technological modelling context or to explain how and why products and/or systems work. 

Given its body of specialised language, technology provides numerous opportunities to develop students’ capabilities in the use of language, symbols, and texts. These capabilities are reinforced by informed technological practice, where experimentation, analysis, testing, and final evaluation require students to interpret specialised language, symbols, and texts and to use such language to explain and justify their thinking. 

Because technology draws knowledge and skills from across a range of learning areas and disciplines, students come to appreciate how and why language, symbols, and texts and what is thought of as "accepted knowledge and skills" differ across disciplines and contexts. Recognising and understanding these differences enhances students’ ability to interpret and use language, symbols, and texts in all areas of their own lives. 

Exploring technological systems and computational thinking using household appliances: Year 1, 2, and 3 students at Waitaki Valley School began to learn the language of technological systems such as inputs and outputs. They built on their understanding of sequenced instructions (making toast) to think of these in terms of computational thinking for digital technologies. 

A recipe book: Linking technology and literacy: Year 7 and 8 students at Waitaki Valley School learnt about the language and formatting of recipes in food technology. 

Evaluating materials for an outcome: Year 12 students from St John's College are using the language of construction and material properties to describe how they are selecting materials for their projects. 

When undertaking technological practice, whether individually or in a group, students need to develop self-management skills to plan ahead and use resources efficiently. By engaging in practice that takes account of wider social and physical environmental factors, students develop their sense of self. They also learn to recognise how they can manage themselves across different life situations, both inside and outside of formal education contexts. 

Technological modelling in tie-dyeing: Year 6 students at Columbia College participated in an integrated technology unit using tie-dyeing. 

In the preparation section, you will see the teacher discussed the key competencies, including managing self, with the year 5-6 class. The teacher created a graphic organiser in which students identified how they would demonstrate the competencies during the tie-dyeing. 

Technological practice is about how students create outcomes (products and/or systems) that meet an authentic need for another person, group of people, other living things, or a place. 

When students follow a given brief (levels 1-2/3) or develop their own brief (levels 3/4 onward), they do this by understanding the need from different perspectives. These are the stakeholder or end-user relationships. They are central to technology education. 

Students relate to others and gain new knowledge when they design and develop concepts for an outcome. This knowledge could be from experts, industry, or other technologists. Technology students gain the confidence and ability to work across a wide range of groups and circumstances by collaborating and, at times, managing conflicts. 

To understand how students are able to relate to others, observe how students do this during technological practice. How do they manage and use these relationships to grow their capabilities? 

This video describes students working with community experts, such as an electrician and scaffolders, to arrange their installation. 

Students undertake technology education in collaboration with others. Ethical and effective design is characterised by innovation and adaptation. This is at the heart of technological practice. 

Student design outcomes are informed by their developing capabilities in critical and creative thinking while using a range of design processes. 

Creativity and critical thinking can require students to contribute to others’ design processes and to receive contributions from others. Design is not something that happens in isolation. 

Students' designs, influenced by participating and contributing, result in rich and innovative outcomes. Students must contribute to their designs and participate in the design activities of others so that the outcomes developed are fit for purpose. 

Pay it forward: Community projects in year 10 textiles: Year 10 students at Gisborne Girls' High School worked collaboratively in groups and with community organisations to identify and create a textile product to meet a need. 

Should you be assessing the key competencies? 

Dr Rosemary Hipkins' article Assessing key competencies: Why would we? How could we? discusses assessment and the key competencies, framed within wider questions about the purposes and outcomes of schooling and education. 

Where to start 

Start by considering some recent lessons: 

• How have you been assessing students’ learning, and why did you do it that way? 
• How was this assessment data used? 
• Was the data useful in the way you intended? 

Your answers will help you look at how you view competencies and capabilities. 

Other questions to consider: 

• Do key competencies give us different kinds of learning outcomes? 
• If they do, do we need different kinds of assessment strategies? 

“When thinking about whether to assess key competencies, we need to consider which aspects of existing practice remain appropriate and which need to be rethought, reshaped, and/or replaced. It's also very important to consider what we might want to achieve by assessing key competencies.” - Dr Rosemary Hipkins, 2007, p. 1 

Purposes for assessing learning 

Three broad purposes for assessing any learning are: 

• accountability and reporting 
• improving teaching and learning 
• fostering lifelong learning. 

The first two will be most familiar. Assessment strategies that aim to foster lifelong learning are becoming more important. 

Consider: 

• How can student judgements about their learning sit alongside teacher-gathered assessments? 
• How does this all fit together with formative feedback for the next steps in learning and reporting for accountability? 

Students use complex design processes when learning in a technology context. These can look very different from student to student. A strength of the technology learning area is that the technology process and its outcomes provide rich assessment opportunities. 

Look for how students are demonstrating the key competencies individually in their technological practice. Assessment needs to be as flexible as the students' approaches to their technology learning. 

Technology learning is about action—learning by doing—in a conceptual framework of competencies and capabilities (using and applying skills and knowledge). This gives us the opportunity to consider new types of learning outcomes. 

Consider: 

• What new types of assessment do you need for new types of learning outcomes? 

Assessment methods 

To assess competencies, consider strategies like: 

• learning logs or journals 
• learning stories 
• portfolios 
• rich tasks in which students develop outcomes in authentic contexts. These will foster lifelong learning and help students develop multiple literacies for the information age to add to the old basics of reading, writing, and numeracy.