Technology education and science education are seen to be related in a particular fashion by many science educators, a relationship exemplified by the ...
Research in Science Education, 1994, 24, 129-136
TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION AND SCIENCE EDUCATION: ENGINEERING AS A CASE STUDY OF RELATIONSHIPS Richard F. Gunstone Monash University ABSTRACT Technology education and science education are seen to be related in a particular fashion by many science educators, a relationship exemplified by the common pairing of the two areas in labels such as "Science-Technology--Society" and "Science and Technology Curriculum". At the heart of this common science education perspective is a view of technology education as dependent on and subservient to science education. In this paper engineering, often seen by scientists as a form of applied science dependent on and subservient to science, is considered. An analysis of the arguments that engineering, far from being an applied science, is a unique way of knowing (that engineering has a unique epistemology) is used to consider the technology education view of the relationships between science education and technology education. It is suggested that science educators need to rethink their perceptions of this relationship if they are to understand the arguments of technology educators. INTRODUCTION One obvious feature of curriculum developments in science education in the last decade has been the growth of use of the la.bel "technology". This has been via the growth of curriculum emphases exemplified by the descriptor "Science--Technology--Society", and by the at times Pavlovian association of "Science and Technology" as a label for a general area of curriculum. However these science education perspectives are frequently at odds with that which is the concern of those promoting technology education as a new focus for schools. Science education has, in essence, embraced technology as a means of providing relevance for the learning of science by including in that learning education about the applications of science. Technology education has a clearly different vision. This is not a new argument. Fensham (1990, 1992) has written persuasively about.technology education's view of the inappropriateness of the notion that technology education is education about the applications of science (see also Scriven, 1987). The purpose of this paper is to reinforce these arguments by considering a situation which I argue to be closely analogous. This is the discipline of engineering. By considering the perspectives of engineers about the epistemology of this area of knowledge, and by contrasting this with the common science perspective about the nature of engineering knowledge, the differing perspectives on technology education held by science educators and technology educators can be illustrated. ENGINEERING AS A CASE STUDY The use of engineering as a case study does no._jtmean that this paper is concerned with the general nature of relationships between science and technology. Those relationships are complex, although often distorted through simplification by science and scientists, and are a crucial aspect of the complexities in the relationships between science education and technology education (see, for example, Gardner, 1992, 1993.) However the focus here is on
130 just one discipline, engineering, and the relationships between that discipline and science as seen by scholars of engineering. Why en.qineerinq? I do not explore engineering because of any perception of engineering being equivalent to technology -- such a perception would be contentious. Engineering has been chosen because the relationships between science and engineering, I argue, have significant parallels with the relationships between science education and technology education. The parallels are particularly valuable in terms of how each group in these two pairings (science-engineering; science education-technology education) sees itself and the other member of the pairing. The most obvious example of this is that just as science tends to see engineering as "applied science", as dependent on and subordinate to science, so science education tends to see technology education as "applied science education" and thus dependent on and subordinate to science education. In both cases the supposedly subordinate other member of the pairing rejects this perspective, and for the same broad reasons. En.qineerinq as a way of knowin.q The essential purpose of this section, I reiterate, is to outline the perceptions of engineers of the discipline of engineering and to consider differences between engineers and scientists in terms of the perceptions of each group of the relationships between engineering and science. Some may feel that the views of engineers about engineering are overstatements (although I do not). This does not impact on the argument of this section of the paper: that it is necessary for science to recognize and accept the legitimacy of engineering's views of itself and engineering-science relationships, even though these views are at odds with those of science. In this context it is also important to note that I am using the label 'science' to denote those intellectual pursuits which are concerned with generating understandings of the physical and biological worlds, 'traditional science'. In this section I am attempting to set out briefly a complex and multifaceted view that engineering is a unique way of knowing. The difficulties of being brief about this lead me to draw heavily on the arguments of Goldman (1990). However Goldman is far from alone. Arguments with the same general thrust as his have been advanced, for example, in the more specific context of aeronautical engineering (Vincenti, 1990) and in the wider case of technology in general (e.g., Ferguson, 1992; Layton, 1974). The essence of the engineering view of that discipline as a way of knowing separate from science is summarized by Goldman (1990): Scientific knowledge and engineering knowledge are two fundamentally different kinds of knowledge, and, bizarre though it may sound at first hearing, they have different worlds as their objects (p.126). Crudely put, science has as its central activity generating descriptions of the ways things are. Engineering has as its central activity generating thirigs that have never been (p.135). There are a number of possible beginning points for elaborating this view of different worlds. Most helpful for the purposes of this paper is how the particular is seen in science and in engineering. For science, the particular has importance as an instance of a generalizable statement (a concept, a principle, a law, etc.). "...the particular is so much better behaved in the world of the scientist than in the world of the engineer that, as it can be deduced from the universal, its particularity can be ignored" (Goldman, 1990, p.126). For engineering, in
131 contrast, the particular is the focus of the investigation, and so that which makes it particular remains central. This is at the heart of the contextual dependency of the solutions to engineering problems (and, in passing, it is a reinforcement of these differing views of the particular that scientists send to talk of "questions", engineers to talk of "problems"). Because solutions to engineering problems are solutions to contextually bound issues, with the context being an inseparable component of the problem, then these solutions "have a particular, arbitrary and contingent character" (Goldman, 1990, p.127). Even the problems are overtly invented in response to the particular, and often by other than engineers. This is in stark contrast to science where the questions ("problems") are almost exclusively generated by scientists and are seen by practising scientists as exploring an already existing reality. These different approaches imply that different forms of reasoning are typical of science and engineering -- and this is indeed argued by those who propose engineering as a.unique way of knowing. For example: ...the objects of engineering reasoning are far more complex than the objects of scientific reasoning; the former, unlike the latter, never lose their particularity and are explicitly inseparable from the intentional, contingent, willful, and value-laden contexts of their formulation (Goldman, 1990, p.129). The issue of different forms of reasoning is best illustrated by considering the central place of design in engineering problem solving. The process of design in the creation of solutions to engineering problems (which, it has been argued, are necessarily contextually bound) "mandates a form of reasoning...that is fundamentally incompatible with the universal, contextfree [science] conception of rationality traditionally promoted by philosophers and embedded in modern mathematics and physics" (Goldman, 1990, p.129). It might be seen that a counter to this argument is that, today, there is much greater acceptance of the notions of science being a human activity, of science being a human construction, of rationality not being absolutely context-free. That is not the central issue. More significant is the concept of universality. In science, or at least in that form of science one can describe as European or Western science and which is ubiquitous in our schools, the intent is to seek th_~e (current) best description of/explanation for a phenomenon. Where competing descriptions/explanations emerge, resolution involves determining which is the (currently) better; the other(s) are discarded. That is, science has a fundamental epistemological assumption that there will be one (currently) best theory. The replacement of that theory with another is widely held to be the consequence of new intellectual activity, albeit with some passage of time and the overcoming of resistance from individual scientists. Engineering, on the other hand, often is just not seeking the "best" solution in this way. For example, consider the conclusions of Waldrop (1989) about the variations in control systems introduced by different manufacturers of commercial aircraft. So, who's right?. Maybe everybody. It's a clich(~ that engineering is an art, but it is. And it's perfectly possible for Airbus, McDonnell Douglas, and all the rest to come up with very different solutions to the problem of aircraft automation, and still be perfectly correct. (p.1534) That is, each of these different solutions is argued to be "best" in the specific context in which it is being used. Even in engineering contexts where the science concept of "best" solution is less inappropriate, best will not be exclusively determined by a set of universal engineering principles. A range of issues associated with the particular problem (potentially embracing economic, political and cultural) will contribute to the determination of best. That is, the particular remains central; the nature of the reasoning used does not admit the science
132 assumptions of the pre-eminence of universality and the existence of unique best explanations. "Engineering knowledge is distinctive for being driven by the" search for consciously non-unique solutions to explicitly invented problems" (Goldman, 1990, p.134). This brief discussion of differences between science and engineering has focussed on the different views of the two disciplines about the significance of the particular and of universality. This does not exhaust the issues which are seen by scholars of engineering to reveal different epistemologies for science and engineering. Among other issues not addressed above is the view that, as engineering always involves action on our world, questions concerning the appropriateness of this action are embedded in engineering itself (e.g., Goodman, 1970). This leads to the argument that constructs such as morality and aesthetics are necessarily a part of engineering, while these constructs are seen as external to the discipline of science. Relationships between enqineerinq and science The purpose of considering engineering as a way of knowing was, primarily, to provide some means for considering views of science-engineering relationships. Science, I have already argued, tends to see this relationship as "engineering is applied science". The above outline of aspects of the engineering view of itself makes it clear that engineering does not see the discipline as applied science; indeed the science view of engineering, as characterized above, has no relevance to the engineering view of engineering discussed here. The crucial point to appreciate is that engineering on its own activity generates knowledge. It does not passively wait for knowledge to be given to it from a different communi:y of practitioners in order for it to attempt increasingly complex enterprises (Goldman, 1990, p.141). Further, as already argued, that knowledge which engineering seeks to generate is not "science knowledge". When compared with science, engineering knowledge is characterized by quite different views of the particular and of universality; it is, in the terms of the first quote from Goldman given in this paper, a fundamentally different kind of knowledge about a different world. Thus, while engineering and science are related, engineering is not subservient to science; while science is a tool which engineering will often choose to use, engineering is not dependent on science. It is not science with applications. Engineers see engineering, science, and the relationships between the two disciplines to be very different from the ways science sees engineering and the relationships. Engineers generate the knowledge that they need, to solve the problems they define, in terms they assimilate. To do so, they selectively appropriate scientific knowledge, in the process transforming it into engineering knowledge (Goldman, 1990, p.128). This conclusion about engineering as a unique way of knowing I argue to have direct parallels with scierlce education-technology education relationships. To make this point I now very briefly ~eJir tt~.' view ~. of technology education that are argued by science educators and technology educators. TWO VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION The views of science education Essentially these views are that technology education is a means of creating relevance for science education. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the British SATIS (Science
133 and Technology in Society) Project. Project's General Guide for Teachers:
The motivation for this project is summarized in the
Much has been written and said about the lack of relevance of the secondary science curriculum; its dryness, its impersonality and its excessively academic content. Introducing social and technological aspects into the science curriculum helps to make science more relevant in a number of ways (Holman, 1986, p.13). This is technology used as "add on" applications for the purpose of enhancing student interest in science per se (Fensham, 1990, p.120). Approaches described by Fensham (1990) as "whole-hearted or central", such as the British Salters Science materials, place technology in a stronger position in recognizing that "the science knowledge of an application is not the same as science knowledge with applications" (Fensham, 1990, p.13). However this is still technology used to enhance science education. What little data is available suggests that this is how science teachers see technology education (Jones & Carr, 1992). The views of technoloqy education Technology educators do not accept these science education perspectives. Their vision is quite different. Consider, for example, the description in the Victorian Technoloqy Stu(lies Framework: P-10 (Maruff & Clarkson, 1988). Technology studies is an area of the curriculum in which students...learn about: * materials (what it is made of) * engineering (putting it together and making it work) * systems (the. whole, not just the part); by being involved in a process of:. * designing it * making it, building it, doing it * testing it; which gives them * a body of knowledge and a repertoire of skills * personal enrichment and self-esteem * an enhanced ability to cope in society * an orientation to the future and to change. (p.7) There are two issues in this description of specific importance to the arguments of this paper. First, note the implicit focus on the particular in the description (what IT is made of, putting IT together, what makes IT go, designing IT. . . . ). Second, consider the sequence in the description. In this technology educators' perspective on technology education it is the processes of design/make/test "which gives" students "a body of knowledge...'. This is obviously different to the science education perspective on technology -- that the learning of a body of generalized knowledge then allows the student to apply this knowledge to design/make/test. The parallels with the differing science and engineering perspectives on the role of the particular and on the significance of universality are clear. The knowledge being considered in the above view of technology education is a different sort of knowledge to that which is of concern to science educators. One form of summary of these different sorts of knowledge is given by Corrigan's (1993) summary (Table 1) of Fensham's (1990) description of differences between science and technology.
134
TABLE 1 A COMPARISON OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
SCIENCE
* * * *
*
*
takes nature apart in order to understand or explain it is interested in natural phenomena is essentially analytical in its thinking is interested in being able to generalize knowledge by inventing concepts and laws and even ideal situations (e.g. ideal gases; frictionless or unbending surfaces) is often driven by knowing for its own sake, by a fascination with natural phenomena is basically comfortable with notions like "discovering" or "uncovering" nature
TECHNOLOGY
* * * *
*
*
puts nature together in order to make something novel is interested in artificial things is interested in essentially synthetic problems is interested in specific knowledge; knowledge that has a bearing on a re,~l specific context and that provides detail about a specific problem always has a human need or opportunity in mind is basically comfortable with notions of "design" and "invention"
(Corrigan, 1993, p.11; after Fensham, 1990) A qualifyinq comment on the two views of technolo.qy education My purpose in describing science educators' and technology educators' views of technology education has been to contrast these. However it should b e recognized that these brief descriptions of views of technology education do not give any sufficient sense of the current debate within each view about the nature and role of technology education. Some of the diversity of views within science education has been hinted at in the references tc~ SATIS and Salters Science, but these two cases do not represent all of the diversity of views. (See, for example, Fensham, 1988 for an elaboration of the varieties of STS approaches to be found in curriculum materials at that time.) Technology education is perhaps even more the subject of internal debate about its nature and form. One obvious case of this is the ongoing English debate about the nature and place of design in technology education in that country (e.g., Norman, 1993). However this diversity of perspectives on technology education within each of science education and technology education does not detract from the essential argument of this paper. CONCLUSION A consideration of the views of scholars of engineering about their discipline and its relationships with science shows that these views have no similarity with the views of scientists about engineering and science-engineering relationships. As seen from the perspective of engineering, engineering and science are different ways of knowing. Although the disciplines are related each has its own identity; neither is dependent on or subservient to the other. That the relationship is seen differently from the perspective of science does not affect the
135 legitimacy of the argument of "related and discrete" as a description of the scienceengineering relationships. The same broad argument applies to the science education-technology education relationship. The views of technology educators are of technology education as a new and different curriculum area, one which legitimately uses science when it is appropriate to technology education. It is a viable new addition to the curriculum because it values different ways of knowing to those valued by science education. One significant component of these differences is, as for the science-engineering differences, the place of the particular and of universality in these two curriculum areas. What value is this argument to science educators? Put simply, science educators cannot understand the arguments of technology educators for the place and purpose of technology education while they continue to see technology education as applied science education. I conclude with another analogy with the same message as the consideration of engineering, an analogy much closer to the heart of the science educator. Consider the relationships between physics education and mathematics education. As a physics teacher I have always felt it absolutely appropriate to see mathematics as a tool I would choose to use when it was appropriate for my physics education purposes. When mathematics teachers told me physics depended on mathematics I knew they were wrong. I knew they did not accept that mathematics and physics represented different forms of knowledge, different ways of looking at different worlds. This lack of acceptance (and therefore of any understanding) of what was to me demonstrable and obvious -- physics was no._~tdependent on and subservient to mathematics -- sometimes led mathematics educators with whom I worked to do things I regarded as outrageous. An extreme example of this came in a year when I taught the same group of Grade 12 students both Physics and Applied Mathematics. I fiercely resented being told by the external examiner of Grade 12 Applied Mathematics that some students on the external examination in that subject had used methods learned in physics to answer problems. (I had taught applied maths to some of these "recalcitrant" students.) That these students had correctly solved the problems on the examination did not after his stance -these were inappropriate methods because they were not part of the mathematics" curriculum. All rather silly, I believe. Well, substitute "technology" for "physics" and "science" for "mathematics" in this example and you have the essential argument of the paper. REFERENCES Corrigan, D. (1993, December). Ways ahead in science, techn01oqy and education. Invited paper given at the annual conference of the Science Teachers Association of Victoria, Melbourne. Fensham, P.J. (1988). Approaches to the teaching of STS in science education. International Journal of Science Education., 10, 346-356. Fensham, P.J. (1990). What will science education do about technology education? Australian Science Teachers Journal, 36(3), 8-21. Fensham, P.J. (1992). Science and technology. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.) Handbook of research on curriculum. New York: Macmillan. Ferguson, E.S. (1992). En.qineerinq and the mind's eye. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gardner, P.L. (1992). The application of science to technology. Research in Science Education., 22, 140-148. Gardner, P.L. (1993). Science, technology and society: Some philosophical reflections on a Grade 11 course. Journal of Educational Thou.qht, 27, 273-300.
136 Goldman, S.L. (1990), Philosophy, engineering, and western culture. In P.T. Durbin (Ed.), Broad and narrow interpretations of philosophy of technoloqy. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Goodman, P., (1970). The new reformation: Notes of a neolithic conse.rvative. New York: Random House. Holman, J. (1986). Science and Technoloqy in Society (SATIS project): General .quide for teachers. Hatfield, U.K.: Association for Science Education. Jones, A., & Carr, M. (1992). Teachers' perceptions of technology education: Implications for curriculum innovation. Research in Science Education, 22, 230-239. Layton, E. (1974). Technology as knowledge. Technolo.qy and Culture, 15, 31-41. Maruff, E., & Clarkson, P. (1988). The technology studies framework: P-10.. Melbourne: Ministry of Education. Norman, E. (1993). Science for design. Physics Education., 28, 301-306. Scriven, M. (1987). The riqhts of technolo.qy in education: The need for consciousness raising. Paper prepared for the Education and Technology Task Force, Ministry of Education and Technology, South Australia. Vincenti, W.G. (1990). What enqineers know and how they know it: Analytical studies from aeronautical history. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Waldrop, M.M. (1989). Flying the electric skies. Science, 244, 1532-1534. AUTHOR DR RICHARD GUNSTONE, Associate Professor, School of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton 3168. Specializations: science education, teacher education.
