Technology and Efficiency: Competencies as Content

Curriculum proposals and counter proposals characterize technology education. Some proposals enjoy widespread attention, others attract only momentary notice. Considerable incongruity, moreover, sometimes exists between stated objectives and the methods proposed to achieve them (Clark, 1989). One source of uncertainty is the lack of clearly articulated curriculum designs. A curriculum design pattern provides a logical way to organize instruction. However, as Eagan (1978) observes, uncertainty over how the curriculum should be organized leads to uncertainty about content. Industrial arts historically has drawn heavily from the competency, or what is more recently termed the technical/utilitarian design pattern (Herschbach, 1989; Zuga, 1989). The technical/utilitarian pattern undergirds much of what is being termed technology education, although a considerable lack of clarity may accompany its application. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of the technical/utilitarian design pattern and its application to technology education. However, competencies, the older, but shorter term will be used throughout this article.