ACARA shape paper-Australian Curriculum: Technologies

Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum:Technologies
Published March 2012

The Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies is intended to guide the writing of the Australian Technologies Curriculum from Foundation to Year 12.


The paper should be read in conjunction with The Shape of the Australian Curriculum v3.0. It is informed by ACARA’s Curriculum Design paper and the Curriculum Development Process

"The Technologies learning area focuses on the purposeful use of technologies knowledge, understanding, and skills including the creative processes that assist people to select and utilise materials, information, systems, tools and equipment to design and realise solutions. These technologies solutions address personal, community and global needs and opportunities that improve quality of life while taking into account societal values and economic, environmental and social sustainability."


My summary of the main points from Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum:Technologies

There is a need in the Technologies learning area to conceptualise a curriculum structure that can flexibly accommodate rapidly evolving and changing technological knowledge, understanding and skills.

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All young people need to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in the discriminating, ethical, innovative, creative and enterprising use of a range of technologies and the processes through which they can create, design, develop and produce innovative technological solutions. They need opportunities to play, learn, create and produce using a range of technologies from the early years and to be able to pursue a continuum of technologies learning through to the senior secondary years.

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All young people need the opportunity to develop the skills to effectively use technologies in their lives and to contribute to a skilled, technologically attuned and highly innovative workforce.

The Australian Curriculum: Technologies will aim to develop students who:
• are creative, innovative and enterprising when using traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies
• effectively and responsibly select and use appropriate technologies, materials, information, systems, tools and equipment when designing and creating socially, economically and environmentally sustainable products, services or environments
• critique, evaluate and apply thinking skills and technologies processes that people use to shape their world, and to transfer that learning to other technology situations
• individually and collaboratively plan, manage, create and produce solutions to purposeful technology projects for personal, local, national and global settings
• engage confidently with and make informed, ethical decisions about technologies for personal wellbeing, recreation, everyday life, the world of work and preferred futures.


In the Foundation to Year 6 scope and sequence, content descriptions and elaborations will be written for a range of technologies contexts. They will complement content descriptions already developed for other learning areas to enable teachers to create integrated teaching and learning programs. Selection of technologies contexts will also take into account the organising ideas for the cross-curriculum priorities and the learning continuum for the general capabilities.

Literacy
74. The Technologies curriculum will present students with particular literacy demands and opportunities, to comprehend and compose a range of visual and digital texts. They learn how to communicate ideas, concepts and detailed proposals to a variety of audiences; recognising how language can be used to manipulate meaning; reading and interpreting detailed written instructions, often including diagrams and specific technologies, procedural writings such as software user manuals, design briefs, patterns and recipes, 3-D models; preparing notated engineering drawings, software instructions and coding; writing project outlines, briefs, concept and project management proposals, evaluations, engineering and project analysis reports; and preparing detailed specifications for production.

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Numeracy
 The Technologies curriculum will provide opportunities for students to apply mathematical knowledge and skills in a range of technologies contexts. Numeracy skills enable students to use mathematics to analyse and address technologies and design questions.



Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
 Information and communication technology will be represented in two ways in the Australian Curriculum. It will be detailed in the Digital technologies strand/subject of the Technologies curriculum and through the ICT general capability that applies across all learning areas.

 Students apply appropriate social and ethical protocols and practices in using ICT to investigate, create and communicate, and develop their ability to manage and operate ICT to meet their learning needs and to become effective users of ICT across the curriculum.

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Critical and creative thinking
Students develop critical and creative thinking in the Australian Curriculum: Technologies as they imagine, generate, develop, produce, and critically and creatively evaluate ideas against a backdrop of rapidly changing environmental, economic and social needs and concerns.
The Technologies curriculum will stimulate students to think creatively about the ways in which products, services and environments impact upon our lives, how they might be better designed, and about possible, probable and preferred futures.

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Personal and social capability
It will assist them in directing their own learning and in planning and carrying out investigations, and will enable them to become independent learners who can apply technologies understanding and skills to decisions they will have to make in the future.



Ethical behaviour
 Students use ethical behaviour as they critically consider and apply ethical principles when collaborating, creating, sharing and being socially responsible in the use of technologies, materials, information, processes, tools and equipment.

The Australian Curriculum: Technologies enables students to learn about safe and ethical procedures for investigating and working with people and animals, and to consider their responsibilities through using sustainable practices that protect the planet for all forms of life that share the world.

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Intercultural Understanding 
It will enable students to explore ways that people use technologies to interact with one another across cultural boundaries and investigate how cultural identities and traditions influence the function and form of products, services and environments designed to meet the needs of daily life.

Cross-curriculum priorities in the Australian Curriculum: Technologies
85. The Australian Curriculum must be relevant to the lives of students and address the contemporary issues they face. With these considerations in mind, the Australian Curriculum gives special attention to three cross-curriculum priorities:
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
• Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
• Sustainability.
it enables them to reflect on personal lifestyle choices and their own environmental footprints.

The indicative hours for writing Technologies curriculum should be read with this in mind. For Design and technologies and Digital technologies combined these are:
• 60 hours across Years F–2
• 80 hours across Years 3–4
• 120 hours across Years 5–6
• 160 hours across Years 7–8
• 80 hours each across Years 9–10
• a further 200 to 240 hours of learning across Years 11–12 for each of Design and technologies and Digital technologies.
Allocation of time for teaching the Technologies learning area will be a school authority or school-based decision. Schools are best placed to determine how learning in Technologies will be delivered.
the Technologies curriculum, particularly in the primary years, allows for the integration and support of other learning area knowledge for mutual development of concepts and skills. This is typical practice in primary classrooms and supports the nature of how young children learn and think.

Technologies learning is active, and involves play and group activities as students design and create solutions to challenges and needs relevant to their lives. Technologies learning applied to real-world situations gives meaning and supports student-centred inquiry and purposeful play and learning, developing a motive for learning in all areas of the curriculum.


To embrace the above curriculum in time I can see a real need for many things to change-not the least of which are our learning spaces.

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