Technological literacy: a multliteracies approach for democracy ...

Int J Technol Des Educ (2009) 19:237–254 DOI 10.1007/s10798-007-9046-0

Technological literacy: a multliteracies approach for democracy P. John Williams

Published online: 20 December 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract Throughout history various grand narratives have impacted on technology education. In the current post modern era of globalization, technology education continues to struggle for relevance and definition, and takes various forms in different countries, but none seem resoundingly successful. The current development of what some have termed a digital democracy (Web 2.0)—the explosion of a new type of information technology which has become an integral characteristic of young people’s lives, is the starting point for this paper. Mainstream literacy theory was reconceptualised in the 1990’s with the foresight of anticipating the significance of a range of literacies. Broad conceptions of Technological Literacy have always accommodated multiple literacies, but must now essentially do so in a dynamic way through the pre-existing pedagogy of design. Keywords Multiliteracy Technology education Technological literacy Democracy Web 2.0

Introduction The relationship between technology and democracy has varied over time. When technologies first developed, accompanying the genesis of civilization as we know it, simple technologies enabled the development of communal democracy. The use of the first tools permitted challenges to existing power structures by enabling those with the technology to exercise their new-found power. Later, increased personal mobility extended relationships once limited to the family and the tribe into broader communities. This geographic extension of community resulted in the spread of democratization influences by further challenging prevailing power structures. Throughout different periods of time, technology has both facilitated the development of democracy and has been an impediment to democracy, and this equally applies today. It could be argued, as does Sclove (1995), that the power vested in the technological elite by P. J. Williams (&) School of Education, Edith Cowan University, Perth WA 6050, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

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the technologies that they control, such as gasoline-powered automobiles or media conglomerates, undermines any grassroots based democratic movements that may develop in opposition to their interests. Such technologies inhibit participation in significant decision making and pre-define social orders that constrain self actualization and support illegitimate hierarchies. On the other hand, some technologies are the means of constituting democratic forms of power sharing, such as broadly accessible web based technologies with international and pervasive distribution networks which enable individuals and groups to have a voice and for the voice to make a difference given the right conditions.

Colonization A brief examination of some recent history illustrates aspects of the interplay between technology and democracy. Democracy is essentially related to power, and in a democratic environment an individual utilizes power to make effective decisions, particularly those decisions related to themselves. During the colonial period, the role of technology was to support the goals of the colonizers, which consisted of building transport systems and extracting raw materials for the benefit of the colonizing country. Such goals rarely coincided with the democratic aims and ambitions of the indigenous population. Technological infrastructure for indigenous health, education and basic infrastructure was very limited. In many countries, missions played a significant role in the provision of the basic services of education and health to the indigenous populations, but of course they also had their own agenda, which was often more aligned with a theocracy rather than a democracy. This ‘‘grand narrative’’ (Boyne and Rattansi 1990) of colonial development through the export of educational systems by powerful nations prevailed up to the 1960’s. The colonial powers used education as a tool in the armoury of colonialism, and its export, including the total package of teachers, curriculum and texts, was designed to promulgate the metanarrative form of civilizing culture perceived to be utopian at that time. The use of manifold means of power, including technology as well as education, conspired against the implementation of democratic ideals. Following the demise of colonialism, the resultant newly independent states represented the deconstruction of the carefully manufactured grand narratives of colonialism (Bernstein 2000), often accompanied by a more literal deconstruction of the existing technologies. The pre-colonial social modes were generally destroyed in the process of colonization. Land ownership, attitudes toward technology, traditional authority structures and both the content and methodology of education were perverted, leaving an inadequate basis for continued technological development. Then there developed an initial optimism that technology could be transferred from more developed countries, and so third world countries would not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ of development, but could rapidly move to a sustainable industrial and technological basis. The World Bank and the United Nations were particularly influenced by this argument and consequently supported many programs of technology transfer. However, the transfer of technology did not achieve its anticipated goals (Bridgstock et al. 1998), framed as it was within a western conception of development and a focus on the instrumental which excluded the intellectual and social (Li-Hua 2007) and resulted in disadvantageous and unintended consequences (International Labour Organization 1977; Marsden 1973; Harrison 1983). A significant and enduring critique of these failures was provided by Schumacher (1973) who proposed as an alternative the idea of ‘intermediate technology’—something

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between advanced western technology which had proved inappropriate, and indigenous technology which was not productive enough to generate higher incomes and the resultant power to make effective decisions. Many successfully developmental technologies were established as an outcome of this philosophy, for example biogas production and brick making in many countries (Darrow and Saxenian 1986). For many countries, the development of intermediate technologies represented the first instance, since the beginning of colonization, of technology providing participating individuals with an effective voice. With its focus on local empowerment, individual control and basic needs, this form of technology provided people with a democratic say in shaping the basic conditions of their lives. The representation of intermediate technology as a form of ‘de-linking’ (Bridgstock et al. 1998) from developed countries and thereby challenging the dependency relationship established through colonization is an important thread in the narrative of democracy and technology. The history of educational transfer, technology education in particular, in some respects mirrors that of technology transfer. Colonial education, like its technology, was limited and self serving. However, in the story of postcolonial technology education there has been no educational equivalent to ‘intermediate technology’, no alternative form of technology education that has democratic participatory principles as its major foundation. Even Technological Literacy as a goal of technology education is often interpreted in an instrumental and self serving way (Petrina 2000). The rectification of this deficiency is one of the issues of this paper.

Globalization In its broadest sense, globalization refers to recent significant changes that have occurred in the international economy and their effects. These include the demise of communist states and the spread of capitalism, the increasing mobility of capital, labour and goods and services, acceptance of market forces, new international divisions of labour and a diminished role for the state. These factors have resulted in a homogenization of production, consumption and cultural values across the world (United Nations 1995). To some extent, the international process of exploitation which began in the colonial period, continues through globalization and the sublimation and domination of the third world. One aspect of the globalization of postcolonialism is the support and replacement of formerly colonial nations such as England, France and Spain by powerful global corporations, in turn supported by international agencies such as the World Trade Organization (Raghavan 1997). In fact some would posit that the outcome of this continuing trend is an elimination of the boundaries between the traditional categories of first, second and third world (Dirlik 1997). Unfortunately, this does not mean that poverty, inequities and social exclusion have been eliminated, but in fact that the categories of exclusion have changed with the barriers now being more technological, and consequently certain groups are even more marginalized and inequities are more dramatic. This ‘Fourth World’ (Castells 1998) represents severely disadvantaged black holes of inequity across the globe that have increasingly little chance of reclamation. They are open to exploitation by the negative forces of globalization, but have no technology to enable taking advantage of any counteracting positive democratic opportunities. There are however some positive outcomes from the forces of globalization: the spread of liberal democracy and the decline of authoritarian regimes, and a developing

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interconnectedness of the global community, the ‘globalization of the local’ as Friedman calls it (2006, p 505). Indeed it is becoming clear that the flat-world platform, while it has the potential to homogenize cultures, also has, I would argue, an even greater potential to nourish diversity to a degree that the world has never seen before (Friedman 2006, 506). Globalization is not just about the economics of labour, capital and market forces. It has also resulted in new forms of knowledge, new modes of communication, new ways of sharing work and alternative forms of entertainment. These new tools possess a potential power equivalent to that of global corporations and international organizations, and the possibility of broad based community access to these tools provides opportunities for a restructured democratic order. The perception of postmodernism and postcolonialism as similar perspectives in which both seek to understand societies in terms of knowledge power (Scholte 2005) is, likewise, a discourse about democracy when that is perceived as a function of power relationships. In this sense Dirlik (1994) characterises post colonialism as a child of postmodernism. For example Foucault (1970), as a proponent of postmodernism, suggests that each historical era is characterized by a particular form of knowledge. Postmodernists attribute a form of rationalism as the dominant knowledge framework in contemporary society, emphasizing the subordination of nature to human control, objectivist science and instrumentalist efficiency. The valuing of such a discourse ferments societies wherein economic growth, technological control and bureaucratic surveillance provide the basis for globalization. An aspect of globalization then becomes the imposition of western rationalism on all cultures. Scholte (2005) describes this rationalism as having four main features through which it promotes globalization. First, it is secularist and does not acknowledge transcendant and divine forces. Second it is anthropocentric and seeks to understand reality in terms of human interests. Third it is a science focus which understands the world through incontrovertible truths which are discoverable through the application of objective research. Finally it is instrumentalist and values the efficient solution to immediate problems (p150). So rationalism, as one basis of globalization, seeks to dominate natural forces for human purposes to promote capitalist production and economic efficiency. Prior to what is generally perceived to be the current globalization movement, a form of rationalism was internationalized through colonialism and informal imperialism.

Technology education In the context of technology education, forms of rationalism could be explicated in a number of ways. During colonial times, the modernist approach could be characterized by the representation of technology education as modern woodwork and metalwork, regardless of significant indigenous technologies related to construction (thatch and mudbrick) or hunting or food preservation or appropriate agricultural technologies. This type of rationalist approach was clearly related to notions of progress, and the determination of a single path toward what was clearly a western conception of progress which had resulted in the superiority of the north (Ullrich 1993). To this end, the imposed technologies represented anti-democratic forces and were utilized to embed power with the colonizers. The emergence of rationalist knowledge as an aspect of globalization (Castells 1998) clashes with the developing postmodern notion of cultural respect and regional independence. As a counterpoint to this force, van Wyk (2002) proposes Indigenous

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(Technological) Knowledge Systems (IKS) as a framework within which diverse learners may construct knowledge from multiple perspectives which are meaningful to them. Van Wyk presents IKS as a critical framework rather than a term with definitive meaning, which seeks to be inclusive and transformative. In the past technology has assumed a culture of power which has marginalized the majority of learners. IKS embodies ultimately a pedagogy that fosters cultural, social and identity criticism to validate the centrality of learners’ experiences and how educators could support them to understand that their realities are socially constructed , and inevitably will be reconstructed as time goes on and exposure to different contexts are enhanced (van Wyk 2002, p311). It is significant that this thinking about knowledge frameworks emanates from a South Africa which is struggling to develop relevant and democratic forms of knowledge in response to many years in which technologies (and technology education) were a weapon in the armoury of totalitarian apartheid. This focus is supported by Keirl (2003) in his call for technology education to adopt a critical and creational approach to knowledge development, placing students at the centre of learning and so provide the opportunity to refute what is perceived to be the antidemocratic aspects of globalization. Very few of the current national and international grand themes of technology education are indisputably successful. A focus on the development of Technological Literacy is probably the most widely touted broad goal of technology education following from a range of rationales. Dakers (2006) focuses on an epistemological rationale for technological literacy, while Petrina (2000) and Keirl (2007) situate the rationale within a social and critical framework. Another rationale is an attempt to attract equitable treatment for technology education alongside the other school literacies of reading, writing and mathematics (Seeman and Talbot 1995; Williams 2005). There is little evidence of progress having been made in moving toward equity of learning areas, reflected for example in the introduction in Australia of national testing (in a state-based educational system) of students in literacy and numeracy, and the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act in the US which also focussed on reading and mathematics. Even in the UK, where rather than focus on technology as a literacy of equivalent importance, research was conducted on how the study of technology could enhance the core curriculum elements of literacy and numeracy (Stables et al. 2001), implicitly relegating the place of technology as a means to another end rather than an end in itself. To a certain extent the US has lead the way in the articulation of the goal of technological literacy with the development of the Standards for Technological Literacy (International Technology Education Association 2000) and associated publications. However, in the US, a reasonable time frame to permit the implementation of these standards has been usurped by a change in direction and a focus on Engineering as the organizational structure for technology education (Lewis 2005), to the extent that the professional association is now contributing to the development of K-12 Engineering Standards, and many universities, secondary and some elementary schools are implementing engineering programs. South Africa has developed a national Technology Education curriculum with a social reconstructivist approach that was scheduled to be implemented in 2006. It has technological literacy as its overarching goal for students, and contains some innovative and unique elements such as ‘appropriate indigenous technologies’ as one of the content areas (Ministry of Education, South Africa 2002). However, largely due to the apartheid policies during the history of South Africa, many rural schools have very few resources and it will

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take many years before all schools enjoy a basic level of technology resources and equipment (Stevens 2006). Similarly, China and India are in the process of developing, trialling and implementing a national technology education curriculum. The challenges facing the curriculum developers in these countries are enormous (Choksi et al. 2006; Gu 2006). Not only is there no widespread educational history of technology as a school learning area, and so no school infrastructure or equipment, teachers, and support material; but with over 1 billion people in each country, change takes place very slowly. England has a multi-faceted approach toward Design and Technology with food, ICT, CAD-CAM and electronics all receiving attention with resources and teacher support material. Recently a number of reports (Design Council 2006) and some research has had a focus on design and creativity, a duality that is vital given the largely instrumental focus of support for design education. The stimulus for the focus on design has been an attempt to ensure the performance of business and industry rather than a concern for the development of individual students, hence the significance of the accompanying creativity, which does focus on the individual. Despite this comprehensive approach to development, design and technology was recently down-graded to a non-compulsory area of the curriculum. New Zealand is currently undergoing a curriculum review in all learning areas. In Technology, after the first formal curriculum in 1995, the review is focussing on moving away from a conception of technological literacy that is embedded in practice, to one which is equally focussed on understanding the philosophy of technology and developing technological knowledge (Ministry of Education, New Zealand 2006). The two proposed new strands of ‘Nature of Technology’ and ‘Technological Practice’ replace the former strands of ‘Technological Capability’ and ‘Technology and Society’, with the Technological Knowledge Strand remaining, but with significant re-conceptualisation. In Australia, the birth of contemporary technology education can be traced to the nationally agreed declaration of eight essential learning areas in 1989, one of which was technology. Since then all the educationally independent states have developed technology curriculum, and consequently undergone curriculum revisions. The state approaches to technology vary from traditional to radical. In the latest round of revisions Victoria, one of the states, has reorganized the learning areas to eliminate technology as an independent area (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority 2006). In a context of teacher shortages and scarce resources, this development is seen to potentially set a negative precedent for other states. So it seems that few national or state approaches to technology education are sustainably successful. Technological literacy as the goal of technology education has appeal because it is multidimensional—it can be related to national economic performance of a literate workforce, it relates to an individual’s level of literacy with the implicit assumption that this will be personally more satisfying, and it can be used to relate to social responsibility in the context of a technological society. Maybe such multidimensionality is problematic in that striving to be all things to all people represents an inadequately broad focus.

TIME person of the year I would like to suggest an element of technological literacy that should be considered in technology education. This came to me when I realized I was awarded TIME magazine’s Person of the Year for 2006 (Fig. 1). The rationale for this decision was the great power

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Fig. 1 An adapted TIME Magazine cover for 2006–2007

that I have to contribute to democracy and to shape the future, and the evidence that I have provided over the past few years of this potential. The medium for this power has been dubbed Web 2.0, the people version of the World Wide Web, relegating Web 1.0 as the paper version. The initial promotion of the term Web 2.0 is generally ascribed to O’Reilly (2006) and refers to a perceived second generation of Web-based services which are characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, user’s ownership of data and an effectiveness of communication that develops proportionally as more people use them. I both learn from and contribute to Web 2.0, whereas I could only learn from Web 1.0— it was only the experts who could contribute. I now review books on Amazon.com, I blogg on about political candidates and have an effect; I podcast things I am interested in to absorb them later at my leisure; I participate interactively in car design competitions; I make movies on my phone and a week later 100,000 people have viewed them; if I am in the right spot at the right time I can film a paparazzi’s dream and distribute it myself; I have my research available in the world’s largest encyclopaedia without having to worry about peer reviews. I have seized the reins of the global media and founded the new digital democracy, I have beaten the pros at their own game (Grossman 2006).

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Journalists feel usurped by what I am able to do with my blogging, and scholars suspect the authenticity of my research in Wikipedia. I am an amateur and now have the means to challenge the professionals, who of course decry my new-found power as the end of quality and professionalism. Keen (2007) provides an extensive critique of this position in his book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy: Democratization, despite its lofty idealisation, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse and belittling expertise, experience and talent. It is threatening the future of our cultural institutions. What the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgement. The information business is being transformed by the internet into the sheer noise of one hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves. My means of involvement include LiveJournal and MySpace, Wikipedia, LastFM, Netflix, Facebook and del.icio.us, Flickr and outside.in. But YouTube is probably the most significant means I have, and it is not just one medium, but several in one. As Poniewozik (2006) explains, it is: • A surveillance system—millions of people, through their mobile phones, have the power to quickly and easily send any happenstance image around the world, from the London train bombing to celebrities in unguarded moments and politicians in compromising positions. • A spotlight—users have the capacity to find significance in events that the mainstream media may ignore. Programs and advertisements made for TV have been rejected and then reborn after being uploaded to YouTube. • A microscope—while TV news is constrained by budgets and time, not so YouTube. Extreme close up video diaries from Iraq, Israel and Lebanon convey the confusion, humanity and reality of war zones. • A soapbox—anyone’s ideas can spread instantly, cheaply, democratically and anarchically.

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is framed in a context of a generation of young people who are growing up with a familiarity of communication technology unfamiliar to previous generations. In an attempt to classify them, they have been labelled ‘Generation Y’ and born in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Of course such labels are fraught, and there are many variations in terminology and parameters in an attempt to demarcate such demographics, including the Net Generation, Millennials, iGeneration, Generation Next and MyPods (fusion of MySpace and iPod). For the purposes of this discussion, a number of the characteristics of Generation Y are relevant as one group of students for whom technology education curricula is, and in an admittedly stereotypical sense, being designed by ‘Baby Boomers’ of a different generation. It is possible that a significant dysfunction arises in curricula that has been designed by Baby Boomers, for the Y Generation. It has been maybe 40 years since there was a real generation gap, when the ‘jungle rhythms’ of rock’n’roll merged into the flower power gained from easy sex and drugs.

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In the last few years a new set of values have arisen, resulting in a barrier between generations. This generation (Y) was the first to witness and use a broad range of technologies from an early age: the internet and broadband, digital cable, cell phones, HDTV, digital cameras, digital pets, camera phones, social networking, GPS, online gaming and touch screens. Of course other generations use these technologies, but it doesn’t come naturally to them. Until these developments, much modern technology mitigated against the opportunity to democratically engage in civic life and its associated politics (and of course still does): shopping malls, spreading suburbia, automobilization and a vast array of home entertainment options, for example. While they may continue to work against the sharing of power, which is true democracy, they do not preclude it, and in the face of a more powerful range of technologies, exercise diminishing influence. The phenomenon of Web 2.0 must be addressed by technology education in working toward technological literacy: it can provide the basis for a student centred approach to technology education that would not only equip students with the skills to participate, but provide them with the technological understanding they need in order to be able to participate in an ethical, socially responsible and informed manner. Aside from the application of Web 2.0 to a contemporary notion of technological literacy, the ‘Global Information Infrastructure’ has been hailed as ‘a metaphor for democracy itself’ (Gore (1994) cited in Kahn and Kellner 2006, p260) There is some danger in promoting this approach. Williams (2006) warns that participation in Web 2.0 is simply a celebration of self, a narcissistic infatuation. It is now possible to go about your day and consume only what you wish to see and hear, ‘...television networks that already agree with your views, iPods that only play music you know you like, Internet programs ready to filter out all but the news you want to hear’ (Williams 2006). The dilemma is that there is a lot of information that individuals in an informed democracy need to know, without realizing that they need to know it. The consequent danger that ‘... we miss the next great book or the next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge ... because we are too busy celebrating ourselves and listening to the same tune we already know by heart’ (Williams 2006). One could respond by questioning the basis of ‘need to know’, and whether individuals actually have the resources and power to decide and then access what it is that they need to know, or whether the alternative has more validity, that media organizations are so democratically attuned to enable them to make those kinds of important decisions. In the latter scenario in which the quality of ‘newsworthy’ is ascribed by media organizations, the individual power to bypass these business decisions and access information that ‘feels’ relevant and important through the Web 2.0 system of opportunities would place the individual in a powerful, self determining position. Generally, that assumption of power is accompanied by a level of responsibility, and unless the responsibility is felt and active, the possession of power becomes untenable. For example in the influential areas of politics, education or the media, irresponsibility results in implications at the ballot box, in tenure or in ratings. However, in the case of the power that accompanies participation in Web 2.0, responsibility can be abused without the loss of power. Fiction can parade as fact, respect for others is not an assumption, character assassinations are tolerated and the unimportant is promoted. Web 2.0 is ‘contested terrain used by the Left, Right, and Centre of different nations and groups to promote their own interests...‘ (Kahn and Kellner 2006, p263). Developing fundamentalist groups from neo-Nazis to al-Qaeda provide all too imminent evidence of the negative outcomes of the contested democratization of communication

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technologies. The global counterpoints proposed by Barber in 1992, prior to the recognition of Web 2.0, provide an exemplar of opposing tendencies related to democracy, power and responsibility. In ‘Jihad vs McWorld’ he explains these forces as having ‘... equal strength in opposite directions, one driven by parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, the one re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within, the other making national borders porous from without. They have one thing in common: neither offers much hope to citizens looking for practical ways to govern themselves democratically’(p.53). Both these forces have found an affinity in Web 2.0, a clear indication that its use is diverse, and confirming the essence of a democratic medium as participatory by all members. So, given that entre´e into this electronic participatory democracy is freely available, and there is no system of checks and balances on the power that is derived from participation, a question arises as to the development of responsibility in the context of education. A technology education approach that addresses the development of technological responsibility as an element of literacy, through a democratic information-technology medium (Web 2.0) would be an appropriate focus for technology education. It is not a radical departure from the goal of technological literacy or creative and innovative design, but more a recognition of the dynamism of both the process and the content of technology. The increase in the power of the individual that accompanies Web 2.0 and the consequent increase in responsibility provides the opportunity for a renewed focus in technology education on the social and ethical nature of technology through the promotion of technological literacy.

Technological multiliteracy As a curriculum goal, technological literacy is generally constituted of an ability/use dimension, a knowledge and understanding dimension and an awareness or appreciation of the relationships between technology, society and the environment (International Technology Education Association 2000; Ministry of Education New Zealand (2006); Ministry of Education South Africa 2002; Department of Education Training and Employment, South Australia 2001; Pearson and Garmire 2006). Curricula then go on to elaborate on the specific abilities or outcomes related to these dimensions which are to be achieved in order to reach a school based level of technologically literacy. Of course there is no absolute definition of literacy: it will vary amongst individuals, societies, regions and nations, and also over time. It depends on ones employment, the type of society one lives in, the geography of a region, the stage of development of a nation and the relevant period of history. In all of these contexts, literacy becomes an essentially dynamic construct that one is always developing towards and never achieving. This dynamism is elaborated by Leonard Waks (2006) in tracing the developments of technological literacy from its genesis in the 1970’s to a contemporary context. He maintains that initial conceptions of technological literacy are no longer valid because of, (a) increased localized ethnic and linguistic diversity, (b) economic and technical convergence into internationally networked systems, and (c) the need to move beyond the limitations of schooling into less structured ‘post-curricular’ designs. Kahn and Kellner (2006) argue for a link between proliferating high technologies and the need for a reconstruction of technoliteracy. Contemporary technoliteracies can ‘...further radical democratic understandings and transformations of our lives, as well as [provide] a democratic reconstruction of education. ...Technoliteracies must be deployed

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and promoted that allow for popular interventions into the ongoing and often undemocratic economic and technological revolutions taking place...‘(p258). The popularization of a multiliteracy approach within education developed as a response to the multiple modes of communication and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity faced by students (The New London Group 1996). There are many synergies between technological literacy and the notion of multiliteracies within literacy education, in developing relevant and engaging pedagogies which promote the critical engagement necessary for students to contribute and achieve to their full potential. Engagement with technology is an unavoidably central characteristic of people’s personal and professional lives. This engagement goes beyond the mere use of technology to participation within a technological milieu which is both personally reactionary, professionally meaningful and socially deterministic. A deep level of technological multiliteracy is fundamental to effective engagement and the consequent design of an appropriate social future. To the extent that prevailing institutional values continue to relate to an economically rational system, engaging students in forms of democratic decision making is difficult. In government, business, health care and education, the individual is rendered an economic entity as a producer or consumer, and the notion of an effective participatory democracy does not fall within these rationalist boundaries. This structure produces ‘human beings unfitted for democratic citizenship: self interested, exploitive, competitive, striving for inequalities, fearful of downward mobility’ (Wolin 2004, p597), quite the opposite to the ascribed virtues of technological literacy. ‘Technoliteracies must be deployed and promoted that allow for popular interventions into the ongoing (often anti democratic) economic and technological revolutions taking place, thereby potentially deflecting these forces for progressive ends like social justice and ecological well being.’ (Kahn and Kellner 2006, p258) Technology education has a history of addressing personal and professional goals, albeit often in a narrow vocational and instrumental manner. The notion that a fulfilling life in a technological society requires a certain skill set which students gain through practical activities in a school technology workshop environment has been a foundation of many technology programs. Likewise, the role of technology education as a career awareness experience leading to later prevocational and vocational mastery of competencies has been an oft argued rationale. A socially constructed rationale for participation in technology education has historically been of less importance, partly because the means that are now available through networked communication systems and elements of globalization did not exist. Now, however, it is not unreasonable to posit that an enhanced technological multilteracy (TML) provides the means for individuals to participate democratically in envisioning and constructing their social future. Some see the incorporation of a Web 2.0 literacy as a new opportunity for the corporatization of education and the implementation of an instrumentalist agenda serving the needs of the business and industry market—quite the opposite of a new sensitivity toward and participation in democratization. There is a danger that instrumental progressivism (Robins and Webster 1999) where reforms that are framed within a progressive view of education really are subservient to corporations and power elites who subvert the outcomes of education to serve their needs. The proposition being offered here is that technological literacy is multiliterate, and the parallel drawn is with developments in the general literacy movement. Historically, general literacy was based on a mono-dimensional construct, but given social and technological developments, a broadening of the construct to multiliteracy provided the platform for a

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more relevant, useful and ultimately democratic approach. Similarly with technological literacy; reframing the traditional approach to technological literacy as a multiliteracies construct highlights its breadth, incorporates contemporary developments and empowers students. The traditional competency based approach to technology education was too narrow to be classified as a literacy. The more recent recognition, through the application of design, that there are a broad range of cognitive skills which can be developed and nurtured through application to a practical context provided the basis for the promotion of the notion that this constitutes a unique type of literacy—technological. The proposition of this paper is that further reconceptualization of this dynamic construct as a multiliteracy enables technology education to respond to the continuing and enduring interplay between technology and democracy in an empowering way for students.

Design as the pedagogy of technological multiliteracy Not coincidentally, the prevailing pedagogy of technology education is design. In positioning technological multiliteracy as the outcome of technology education, design remains a most appropriate mechanism to that end. Others have more latterly come to this same conclusion. For example, related to literacy education, The notion of design connects powerfully to the sort of creative intelligence the best practitioners need in order to be able, continually, to redesign their activities in the very act of practice (The New London Group 1996, p73). The New London Group, in their critique of literacy education, proposed design as the metalanguage of multiliteracies (The New London Group 1996) because of its richness and depth of meaning, and its felicitous ambiguity in identifying an organization or a product or a process. The group proposed three elements to design: Available Designs, Designing and the Redesigned in an attempt to emphasize the fact that ‘meaning making is an active and dynamic process, and not something governed by static rules’ (p74). In elaborating on the processes of learning about technology (information technology) Koehler and Mishra (2005) also propose learning by design (as if it was something new!), because of the rich directed action platform it provides. In their proposal of design they emphasize complexity, self direction, sustained enquiry, personal meaning, motivation and problem solving as the rationale for this approach. It is certainly the case that the psychology of ‘thinking and doing’ as the mode of learning in technology education resonates with the interactivity of Web 2.0 The appropriateness of design as the pedagogy and process of technology education has been established in much research and curriculum literature, and it is not the intent here to review this documentation. What follows is an attempt to articulate those aspects of design, which most clearly render it a useful pedagogy, within technology education, in the achievement of technological multiliteracy as a means for students to democratically participate in the shaping of their futures—personally, professionally and socially. The selection of these aspects is based on the presupposition that technology is not autonomous and abstract, but is pliable, and personally and socially embedded in contexts with which students are involved. Their involvement is collaborative and communal, both in useful (the way they use) and deterministic (the way they design) ways. The domain of knowledge as a separate entity is irrelevant; the relevance of knowledge is determined by its application to the technological issue at hand. So the skill does not lie in the recall and

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application of knowledge, but in the decisions about, and sourcing of, what knowledge is relevant. Many technology education teachers have an understanding of the virtues of design as a pedagogy for technology: it is ill-structured and ill-defined, learner centred, interdisciplinary, collaborative, iterative, creative and purposeful. It is the intent in this paper to focus on those factors which are particularly applicable to the development of technological multiliteracy for democratic engagement in determining the future. So, in addition to these characteristics, the pedagogy of design for technological multiliteracy is a complex interaction of four factors: it is contextualized, critical, transformative and purposeful.

Contextualized Technologies are not passive, they are active participants, just as are people, in the technological/cultural/social milieu. The implementation of technologies has consequences, which are both intentional and unintentional. Tenner (1996) in his book Why Things Bite Back? deals with the ‘revenge effect’ of technologies and concludes that technology demands more, not less human work to function and that the need for vigilance has increased rather than diminished. It is generally recognized that learning is enhanced to the extent it is situated in a relevant context; student interest and motivation is greater. Opportunities are manifold within the breadth of technology and through the utilization of Web 2.0 to engage students in activities that are interesting, meaningful and form the basis of a situation in which they become engaged in technological world which has both personal and global dimensions. Students are pre-engaged in Web 2.0, providing a ‘classroom ready activity’

Purposeful Design interactions develop purpose through the conversations between the designer and the artefact, given the precondition that the designer finds the context relevant. Schon (1996) refers to the process as ‘backchat’, the way the design talks back to the designer. ‘Backchat’ fosters deep critical and personal involvement with the design context thereby setting the scene for transformative outcomes, which will only result if the activity is purposeful.

Critical Keirl (2007) has provided an appropriate defence of the practice of critiquing through developing the learners thinking capabilities, enhancing Technology Education practice and serving the ends of a robust democracy. Keirl argues that ‘the minimilisation of critical discourses in society today is linked to the uncritical bringing-into-being of technologies’ (p308), and that in technology education, critiquing can find a home as a personal learning tool, a stimulus to design activity and a shaper of quality pedagogy (p311). The context of technology education provides a rich environment for students to develop critiquing skills and so practice a form of critical democratic participation related to technologies. This rich environment exists because many technologies are disputable in terms of development, goals and effects; they are present, immediate and so relevant for

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students; and the mechanism for both sourcing information, having a voice and effecting outcomes is enhanced through Web 2.0.

Transformative The goal of all effective pedagogies is to be transformative; to transform pre-existing attitudes and practice to accommodate new experiences and knowledge in working toward, in this case, a form of technological multiliteracy which essentially results in the felt need to participate in the democratization of technology and the design of personal and social futures. The New London Group (1996) proposed that design provided an appropriate conceptual basis for a multiliteracy pedagogy. As earlier stated, they structured this design pedagogy as having three elements: Designs, Designing and The Redesigned. The Redesigned is the transformative outcome of the process, ‘something through which the meaning-makers remake themselves’ (p76). As part of this pedagogy, teachers provide the cultural and technological resources in which students embed their practice. Through critical and metacognitive processes, the practice becomes personally transformative. The expression of the transformation enforces a deterministic participation in a personal future and a democratic participation in a social technological future. Design is an appropriate pedagogy of technology in working toward a multiliteracy which provides students with a tool kit of relevant knowledge, critical skills and multiple processes through which to shape the world in which they live. Through designing, students critique technologies that are relevant to them. As an outcome of their critique, they develop skills to represent their new ideas in three dimensional forms. They engage locally and globally, through Web 2.0, to both inform their critique and to disseminate and consequently refine their ideas through iteration. Through the development of this type of technological multiliteracy, students will be empowered with the sills they need to take an active role in a social and personal democracy.

Curriculum framework A postmodern and enquiry based narrative of technology, which pays mutual attention to both the local context and impinging global developments through the multiliteracy mechanisms of Web 2.0 would seem to provide an appropriate framework for the development of technology education. Students need to be equally immersed in functional, critical and rhetorical literacies in order to fully use and understand the digital communication technologies of Web 2.0. The functional involves learning how to learn, transferable learning strategies that can be applied to new and unexpected situations. This enables movement from an instrumentalist focus on skill based competencies to situating the technologies within contextualized networks of power and culture. Critical literacy encompasses analysis of contexts and function of technologies, including tacit assumptions of technology developers. Rhetorical literacy results in the invention of the new, the reconstruction of technology. A personal relevance type of curriculum design may be the most appropriate in this context. It is based on humanistic theory and so the emphasis is consequently on personal growth, integrity, autonomy and uniqueness. The goal of such a curriculum is to produce a

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self actualizing, autonomous, authentic, healthy happy person (Petrina 1992) through an integrated focus on the cognitive, affective and psychomotor areas of development. McNeil (1981) isolates a number of concepts, which form an essential basis for personal relevance curriculum design: 1. All individuals participate in the curricular and learning processes. 2. There is integration of the material being learnt and integration in the humanistic approach taken. 3. The subject matter is emotionally and intellectually relevant to the participants. 4. The person is the object of the learning. 5. The goal is to develop the whole person within a social/technological context. A humanistic approach to technology is appropriate in this context given its integrative potential and the individually autonomatic balance it provides to the potentially deterministic forces of technology. Children’s feelings and morality about technology have a significantly higher level of potency when they are channelled through the mechanisms which have become Web 2.0. Specific teaching techniques are implied in this approach to curriculum and are sympathetic with the identified factors of design. They would be those which encourage planning and spontaneity, expression, insight, and reflective thought. The source of content is determined by its relevance to the individual’s environment and their immediate concerns. The learning would be organized with an emphasis on unity and integration, for example organized in units or themes rather than discrete subjects.

Conlcusion Technology is of course not the only factor determining the efficacy of a participatory democracy, either through impairing it or facilitating it; there are many others well beyond the influence of schooling. Elements of the argument of this paper, that one focus of technology education in a postmodern age should include a preparation for engagement in a participatory democracy may be contestable, but certain facts remain: • The current approaches to technology education in a range of countries have limited success; • Web 2.0 enables a level of individual participation heretofore unavailable, and provides a medium of personal relevance to students, in aiming for an appropriate level of technological multiliteracy. Many technologies are the substance of public controversy and increasingly consume media attention and political preoccupation. Consider power generation, the causes of what used to be natural disasters, telecommunications and security systems, defence and weapons systems, hazardous waste disposal and resource exploration. Powerful political actors dominate the discussion and control of significant technological issues—politicians, government administrators, corporate leaders and representatives of special interest groups. This current system of discourse and decision making is inadequate because it: • excludes lay citizens from anything but a trivial role; • often raises questions after many of the most important decisions have already been made;

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• evaluates technology on a case by case basis rather than having a philosophical starting point as a basis for decision making; • focuses on a few high profile technologies at the expense of the mass of emerging and existing technologies; • directs attention to material issues rather than the often more important social and cultural issues; • excludes discussion of the influence of technology on democracy (Sclove, 1995, p240) Left to current patterns of control and decision making, the world is not going to get better. But this degeneration is insidious; standards of democracy, personal freedom and well being are diminished in small steps which neither make big news nor become the focus of attention. So life progressively becomes more technologically determined without attracting attention to the trend. The thesis of this paper is that if technological multiliteracy becomes the focus of technology education through its positioning as a moral rather than vocational or instrumental practice, and the mechanism is available for students to express their beliefs, then the move toward a more democratic technological order becomes possible. References Barber, B. (1992). Jihad vs McWorld. The Atlantic,269(3). Bernstein, H. (2000). Colonialism, capitalism, development. In A. Thomas (Ed.), Poverty and development into the 21st century (pp. 241–270). Milton Keynes: Oxford University Press. Boyne, R., & Rattansi, A. (1990). The theory and politics of postmodernism: By way of an introduction. In A. Rattansi (Ed.), An introduction to post modernism and society. London: Macmillan. Bridgstock, M., Burch, D., Forge, J., Laurent, D., & Lowe, I. (1998). Science, technology and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castells, M. (1998). End of millennium. London: Blackwell Publishers. Choksi, B., Chunawala, S., & Natarajan, C. (2006). Technology education as school subject in the Indian context. In K. Volk (Ed.), Articulating technology education in a global community: 2006 international conference technology education proceedings. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Technology Education Association. Dakers, J. (2006). Defining technological literacy: Towards and epistemological framework. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Darrow, K., & Saxenian, M. (1986). Appropriate technology sourcebook. Stanford: Volunteers in Asia. Department of Education Training and Employment, South Australia (2001). South Australian curriculum standards and accountability framework. Retrieved September 17, 2007 from http://www. sacsa.sa.edu.au/index_fsrc.asp?t=LA Design Council (2006). Design council annual 2005/06. London: Author. Dirlik, A. (1994). The postcolonial aura: Third world criticism in the age of global capitalism. In P. Mongia (Ed.), Contemporary postcolonial theory (pp. 294–319). London: Arnold. Dirlik, A. (1997). The postcolonial aura: Third world criticism in the age of global capitalism. Boulder: Westview Press. Foucoult, M. (1970). The order of things. London: Tavistock. Friedman, T. (2006). The world is flat. London: Penguin. Grossman, L. (2006). Time’s person of the year: You. Retrieved 24 January, 2007, from http:// www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601061225,00.html Gu, J. (2006). Technology education in general high school under basic education curriculum reform in Mainland China. In K. Volk (Ed.), Articulating technology education in a global community: 2006 international conference technology education proceedings. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Technology Education Association. Harrison, P. (1983). The third world tomorrow. Hammondsworth: Penguin. International Labour Organization (ILO) (1977). Matching employment opportunities and expectations: a program of action for Ceylon. Geneva: United Nations. International Technology Education Association (2000). Standards for technological literacy. Virginia: Author.

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