《網路社會學通訊期刊》，84期，99年01月15號

1 Introduction

The cultivation of outstanding technology talents should be started from solidifying the foundation of technology education at the stage of elementary schools. In recent years, Taiwan and the United States have been endeavoring to reform their technology education. The leader of technology education for all Americans, [4] indicated that in the past years of over a decade, the education reforms of the United States have been impacted by education standards. It had been a long time that the technology education of Taiwan exemplified the practices of the United States. On Sep. 30 1998, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan completed the curricular revision of the first stage, and promulgated “General Guidelines of Grade 1-9 Curriculum of Elementary and Junior High School Education,” constructing the vertical linking framework of Grade 1-9 curriculum. As from the academic year of 2001, the new curriculum of Grade 1-9 was gradually implemented year by year. In 2008, the latest Grade 1-9 curriculum was promulgated. Of it, the level-based competence standards for the learning area of Nature and Technology had an alteration that the understanding of the nature of science was changed to be the understanding of the nature of science and techniques, hoping to cultivate portable competence in students. In this way, basic competence replaces academic knowledge. In each learning area, the competence standards of each grade are formulated. And the concept of level-based competence standards of learning areas is very much similar to the academic standards of the American “standard-based education” [11].

Ever since the 1980’s, many political leaders, education workers and the social public of the United States have been suggesting that performance standards, evaluation ways and learning areas should be more clearly formulated and more highly demanded. Therefore, professional institutions of different learning areas all over the country involve in the formulation of education standards[8]. Whether these standards have been embedded in curriculum can be observed from whether the instructional activities are meeting the instructional goals. As to instructional goals, they should be further regulated according to the standards; otherwise, the instruction cannot be called effective. Therefore, to teachers, standards are the highest guidelines of their instructional activities.

[1] indicate that Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Revised Version) (simply referred to as “the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy,” hereinafter) emphasizes meaningful learning, and even emphasizes the investigation on the learning contents (knowledge) and thinking ways (cognitive process) of learners. Hence, the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy contains two dimensions: one is knowledge dimension, which helps teachers distinguish what they teach; and the other is cognitive process dimension, which facilitates students to keep and move the knowledge they have learned. This paper mainly analyzes the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy [1], and investigates from Taiwan’s Grade 1~9 Nature and Technology area the items and contents of technology-related competence standards, reviews the document of “Standards for Technological Literacy (STL): Content for the Study of Technology” completed by Technology for All Americans (TfAA) Project in 2000[6]. It is hoped that through the analysis of the above theme, we can understand the existing similarities, dissimilarities and distribution of curriculum standards of technology education over the issue of knowledge dimension between Taiwan and the United States. The analytic results can be provided for local and foreign technology-related teachers as a basis in setting up their instructional goals, devising instructional activities and designing evaluation of their students, and be referential for analysis in the later days.

2 Literature Review

2.1 General Guidelines of Grade 1-9 Curriculum of Elementary and Junior High School Education [14]

2.1.1 Background of Revision

The curriculum standards of the existing elementary and junior high schools were revised and promulgated in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Since innovative education thinking and practices were needed in the new century, while the existing curriculum was being implemented year by year, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan thought that it was required to launch plans for another curricular reform in order to integrate the public’s consensus and efforts towards education reform, and further create a new realm for school education. The curricular reform made this time was carried out in 6 stages, and the schedule of these stages was as follows: Stage 1: Establishing the “Special Panel on Curriculum Development of Elementary and Junior High Schools” (from Apr. 1997 to Sep. 1998); Stage 2: Establishing the “Panel on Researching and Formulating the Guidelines of Each Learning Area in Grade 1-9 Curriculum” (from Oct. 1998 to Nov. 1999); Stage 3: Establishing the “Review Committee on Revision and Formulation of Elementary and Junior High School Curriculum” (from Dec. 1999 to Aug. 2002); Stage 4: Establishing the “Review Committee on Formulating the Guidelines of Elementary and Junior High School Curriculum” and regularly established curricular revision mechanism of the “Panel on Researching and Developing the Guidelines of Elementary and Junior High School Curriculum” (from Jan. 2004 to today); Stage 5: Establishing “Panel on Researching and Revising the General Guidelines of Elementary and Junior High School Curriculum, Various Learning Areas, Living Curriculum and Major Issues” (from Oct. 2006 to Apr. 2008); Stage 6: Establishing the “Panel on Reviewing the General Guidelines of Elementary and Junior High School Curriculum, Various Learning Areas, Living Curriculum and Major Issues” (from Oct. 2007 to Apr. 2008).

2.1.2 Learning Areas

In order to cultivate basic competences in citizens, the curriculum of elementary and junior high school education should provide 7 major learning areas, including language, Health and Physical Education, Social Studies, Arts and Humanities, Mathematics, Nature and Technology, and Integrative Activities, on 3 different dimensions, including individual development, social culture and natural environment. For the learning area of Nature and Technology, its main contents include such the learning of substances and energy, the world of lives, global environment, ecological conservation and information technology, emphasis on science and the research, knowledge and skills of science, promotion of respect for all forms of life and love of the environment, cultivation of the competence of making good use of technology and information, and application of knowledge and skills to daily life.

Referring to the knowledge structure of each learning area concerned and the continuous development principles of learning psychology, these learning areas are divided into several learning stages. Competence standards are set for each stage. For the learning area of Nature and Technology, it is divided into 4 stages. Stage 1 covers Grade 1 and Grade 2; Stage 2 covers Grade 3 and Grade 4; Stage 3 covers Grade 5 and Grade 6; and Stage 4 covers Grades 7, 8 and 9.

2.2 Contents and Framework of the American Technology Education Curriculum

In 2000, International Technology Education Association (ITEA) executed the development of Technology for All Americans Project (simply referred to as “TfAAP,” or “TAA,” hereinafter). The Project pointed out, “Technology is human innovation in action.” As indicated by [16], the contents of technology curriculum of TfAAP mentioned by ITEA emphasizes that under the goal of development of technological literacy among students, the guidelines provided for developing the curriculum contents of technology education have the goal to cultivate technological literacy in every individual student through general education. In order to achieve this goal, TfAAP planned to develop 20 STL for the students of each grade. TfAAP was carried out in 3 stages. Stage 1 was the publication of “Technology for All Americans Project: A Rationale and Structure for the Study of Technology.” Stage 2 was the development of a 4-year plan, “Standards for Technological Literacy (STL): Content for the Study of Technology,” which was launched in Apr. 2000. These standards mainly let students know certain knowledge and possess certain competences before they became a person with technological literacy. Stage 3 of the Project (2000-2003) planned that all the people should endeavor to develop 3 handbooks relating to STL.

2.3 Competence Standards

[15] Think that standards refer to the development of definition of each element within a certain definition boundary over knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes and behaviors, or the development of criteria-related experience rules. [17] believe that standard imply to the referential standard of a phenomenon, ability or result, through which the extent of achievement can be understood, and can serve as a basis for subsequent analysis, induction or revision. Therefore, standards can be considered a significant reference for judging the extent of goal achievement. [3] thinks that speaking of the semantic meaning of text description, competence standard is a kind of “competence-oriented” “curricular goal,” being a proposition indicating the contents and standard that a certain kind of competence performance should possess. Based on this proposition, “level-based competence standards” can be further explained that upon completion of a certain learning stage, students have to know very well the basic learning contents as well as the ways and standards of competence performance. Chen also thinks that the full name of competence standards should be “level-based competence standards,” which contain competence-oriented and stage-based implications.

[9] and [10] point out that competence standards have 4 functions as follows:

(1) Basis for editing instructional materials: The editing of instructional materials by publishers or schools themselves has to be based on competence standards. The contents of instructional materials should take achievement of competence standards as the goal.

(2) Prerequisites for the firm establishment of instructional goals and the use of instructional methods: According to competence standards, teachers can study and draft their instructional goals or students; learning goals, use different kinds of learning methods properly, and let students present the competences indicated in competence standards.

(3) Criteria of instructional evaluation implemented by teachers: When implementing instructional evaluation, teachers have to inspect the extent of competence standards achieved by students. Teachers should regard competence standards as the criteria of evaluation standards.

(4) Norm of Basic Achievement Test: Regarding the implementation of Basic Achievement Test by the Ministry of Education, the questions devised have to be able to test the 10 major basic competences and the competence standards of different learning areas.

2.4 Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Revised Version)

The cognitive area of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives co-formulated by Bloom and several scholars is divided into 6 levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Bloom thinks that this Taxonomy is not only a set of tools, but also a common language for writing learning objectives [18].

The Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is formulated according to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive area. The revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives takes knowledge dimension and cognitive process dimension as the structures of educational objectives to be applicable to all the students of different grades. Knowledge dimension is divided into 4 general types, including “factual knowledge,” “conceptual knowledge,” “procedural knowledge” and “metacognitive knowledge,” as well as 11 minor types, including “knowledge of terminology,” “knowledge of specific details and elements,” “knowledge of classifications and categories,” “knowledge of principles and generalization,” “knowledge of theories, models and structures,” “knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithm,” “knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods,” “knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures,” “strategic knowledge,” “knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge,” and “self-knowledge.” These types are arranged in an order from concrete to abstract aspects.

3 Method

The nature of the study belongs to an explorative study of content analysis. And content analysis methodology provides quantitative handling of quality problem. In social science, it is a kind of systematic methodology having the clear and potential said or written contents being handled [2] , [7] and [13]. Therefore, focusing on the classified targets, analysis framework and classification criteria, the study gives related explanation.

3.1 Classified Targets

The study takes the items and contents of technology-related competence standards of elementary schools in Taiwan’s Grade 1~9 Nature and Technology area, as well as the American elementary schools’ Standards for Technological Literacy (STL) proposed by Technology for All Americans Project (TfAAP) as the research targets, with both details indicated in Annex (1) and Annex (2) respectively.

For Taiwan, technology curriculum is combined with natural science curriculum to form the Nature and Technology area. Regarding the items and contents of technology-related competence standards in Taiwan’s Grade 1~9 Nature and Technology area, [16] indicates that according to their attributes and levels, they can be divided into 7 major items, including process skills, scientific and technical cognition, technological development, scientific attitude, intelligence of thinking, application of science, and design and manufacturing. Of them, since the competence standard of “nature of science” belongs to the part of natural science area, it is not listed out. As to the American STL, the full text covers 5 main areas (namely nature of technology, technology and society, design, competence required by the technological world, and the world of design) and 20 standards for technological literacy [6].

Regarding the items and contents of technology-related competence standards in Taiwan’s Grade 1~9 Nature and Technology area, for the code “a-b-c-d,” “a” represents the sequence number of the main item; “b” represents the sequence number of stage, in which 1 represents Stage 1 covering Grade 1 and Grade 2, 2 represents Stage 2 covering Grade 3 and Grade 4, 3 represents Stage 3 covering Grade 5 and Grade 6, and 4 represents Stage 4 covering Grades 1, 2 and 3 of junior high school; “c” represents the sequence number of minor item, which is based on observation, comparison and classification, organization and correlation, induction and inference, and transmission, and numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4 one by one, but numbered as 0 for an item not being categorized; and “d” represents the serial number.

The full text of STL for the American elementary schools proposed in TfAAP is divided into 5 main areas and 20 main technological literacy standards to be implemented in 4 stages, being K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. Among them, the stages of K-2 and 3-5 are at elementary school period. The representative meanings of the codes A-B-C are further explained as follows: A is the curriculum standard, with 20 standards in total; B is the learning stage, with 2 stages (K-2, 3-5) in total; and C is the serial number of the achieved goal.

3.2 Analysis Framework

Revised from Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive area, the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is applicable to all the students of different grades. And knowledge dimension is divided into 4 general types, namely “factual knowledge,” “conceptual knowledge,” “procedural knowledge” and “metacognitive knowledge,” as well as 11 minor types. These types are arranged in an order from concrete to abstract aspects. Based on the general types and minor types, the study gives the following explanation [1]:

A. Factual knowledge: It refers to the basic elements that students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems in it.

Aa. Knowledge of terminology: It refers to the specific linguistic and non-linguistic titles and symbols, such as words, figures, symbols, graphs.

Ab. Knowledge of specific details and elements: It refers to the knowledge sourced from incidents, positions, characters, data and information. It can include accurate and specific information, such as the precise data of an incident or the precise size of a phenomenon.

B. Conceptual knowledge: It refers to the interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together.

Ba. Knowledge of classifications and categories: It comprises the knowledge of the types, grades, discrimination and arrangement of different affairs.

Bb. Knowledge of principles and generalizations: Principles and generalized knowledge are formed by classifications and categories. Through the abstract summarized from the observed phenomenon, the more important ones can be applied to the description, prediction, explanation or determination of action and the adopted direction.

Bc. Knowledge of theories, models and structures: It comprises the principles and generalizations, as well as the knowledge of their correlation. It proposes clear, complete and systematic viewpoints towards complicated phenomena, problems and things, and emphasizes the formation of theories and models or structures by a set of knowledge of principles and generalizations. It can be used to describe, understand, explain and predict phenomena. It is the most abstract level in facts and concepts.

C. Procedural knowledge: It refers to how to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques and methods.

Ca. Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms: For example, the skilful knowledge of painting by watercolor, the skilful knowledge of determining the meanings of words according to structural analysis.

Cb. Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods: For example, the knowledge of social science research approach.

Cc. Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures: For example, the knowledge of criteria for determining which method should be used to solve algebraic equations.

D. Metacognitive knowledge: It refers to the knowledge of cognition in general as well as awareness and knowledge of one's own cognition

Da. Strategic knowledge: The strategic knowledge used in learning, thinking and problem-solving can be applied across a large number of different areas, e.g. solving a quadratic equation in mathematics, or applying Ohm's law in science, the various kinds of strategic knowledge being helpful to memorizing.

Db. Knowledge about cognitive tasks, comprising appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge: It refers to the metacognitive strategic knowledge available to be used by students, as far as they know. It implies to “when” and “why” to use these strategic knowledge appropriately, e.g. the different strategic knowledge about how, when and why to use homeland and general social, traditional and cultural standards.

Dc. Self knowledge: It refers to the consciousness of knowledge about the self. [5] indicates that self knowledge includes the knowledge of cognition towards the self as well as the merits and demerits of learning competence, e.g. to the knowledge of students and generally speaking, the self-knowledge of the test technique that doing multiple choice questions is better than doing essay questions.

3.3 Classification Criteria

Adopting content analysis methodology and using the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy as an analytical tool, the study inspects Taiwan’s and the American classification of technology education standards in knowledge dimension, and compares the difference between these two countries. When the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is used for analysis, it is further classified according to the above analysis framework. Focusing on the description of standards, and according to the general types and minor types in knowledge dimension, the paper performs a categorization of these standards, and finally embeds them in the analysis framework. At the same time, in order to keep a certain sense of objectivity for the categorization process of these standards, the reading and categorization tasks of each standard are independently undertaken by two researchers of the study respectively. In the study, the two researchers firstly use the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy individually. In order to eliminate the subjective judgment of each researcher, before categorization, the two researchers carry out studying and discussion together, and acquire the following categorization criteria: (1) Inspect the sentence structures and vocabulary meanings of all standards one by one, as well as the complete contents of the text before categorization. (2) Compare and discuss the categorization results. Focusing on the dissimilarities of analytical results between these two researchers, further discussion should be made, consensus should be formed, and the credibility among analyzers should be established. Below is a description of different criteria:

(1) Analysis of the complete contents of the text of competence standards:

First of all, the study inspects the sentence structures and vocabulary meanings of the level-based competence standards of all the technology education areas one by one. According to the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and the nature of each specific item in knowledge dimension, the two researchers of the paper analyze the codes of the level-based competence standards of technology education area, and cross-check them one by one. In case the codes are different, they are listed out for further discussion and identification by the two researchers in due course.

For the standard 1-2-1-1 for item “being conscious that a thing has identifiable characteristics and attributes” for example, since it belongs to the knowledge and consciousness of self-cognition, it is categorized into D, “metacognitive knowledge.” And the item “being conscious that a thing has identifiable characteristics and attributes” belongs to the knowledge of personal judgment of effect evaluation of related things, so that it is categorized into Dc, “self-knowledge.” All the level-based competence standards are classified and numbered one by one in this way, and then undergo cross-examination as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

(2) Making comparison and discussion:

The two researchers compare the categorization results acquired from the above procedure. If their categorization results of competence standards are inconsistent, discussion is carried out. If the discussed results are still inconsistent, another researcher is invited to join the discussion. Nevertheless, some of the standards have ambiguous expressions in the identification of their knowledge dimension. Thus, there is still room for revision and discussion.

4 Results

According to the above analysis criteria, the paper uses the 4 general types and 11 minor types of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy on knowledge dimension as the analysis framework, and makes an overall evaluation and analysis on the contents of Taiwan’s and the American technology education standards as follows:

4.1 Technology-Related Competence Standards of Taiwan’s Elementary Schools

From the Table of Classification Statistics of Technology-Related Competence Standards of Taiwan’s Elementary Schools in “Knowledge Dimension” (as shown in Table 1), the following results can be clearly found:

(1) In the domain of knowledge contents of the 7 major technology-related standard categories of Taiwan’s elementary schools, among the 4 general types, “metacognitive knowledge” occupies the highest proportion (40%), and the next ones to follow are “factual knowledge” (30%), “conceptual knowledge” (16.7%), and “procedural knowledge” (13.3%).

(2) Among the 7 major technology-related standard categories of Taiwan’s elementary schools, the perspective of “process skill” appears to have the highest proportion (26.7%) towards the 11 minor types of knowledge dimension.

(3) Among the 7 major technology-related standard categories of Taiwan’s elementary schools, the perspective of “scientific attitude” appears to have the lowest proportion (3.3% only) towards knowledge dimension.

Table 1.Table of Classification Statistics of Competence Standards of Taiwan’s Technology Education in “Knowledge Dimension”

5 Conclusions and Suggestions

5.1 Conclusions

(1) The study shows that within the 4 general types in the domain of knowledge contents, among the 7 major technology-related standard categories of Taiwan’s elementary schools, “metacognitive knowledge” occupies the highest proportion (40%); and among the 20 major standard categories of STL for the technology education of the American elementary schools, “conceptual knowledge” occupies the highest proportion (36.6%). It can be seen that the contents of the 7 major technology-related standards of Taiwan’s elementary schools emphasize the aspect of “metacognitive knowledge,” whereas the STL for the technology education of the American elementary schools emphasize the aspect of “conceptual knowledge.”

(2) Since the perspective of “scientific attitude” in the 7 major technology-related standard categories of Taiwan’s elementary schools primarily belongs to the area of sentiment standard, it appears to have the lowest proportion (3.3% only) towards knowledge dimension. As to the American elementary schools, since the 7th STL requesting students to develop the understanding of technological influence in history merely belongs to conceptual knowledge, it appears to have the lowest proportion (1.9% only) towards knowledge dimension.

(3) The curriculum standards of Taiwan’s technology education are included in the level-based competence standards of Grade 1~9 Nature and Technology learning area, but the STL for the American elementary schools proposed in TfAAP are presented independently. At the elementary school education stage, there are 109 STL items in the United States, but only 70 items of technological literacy standards in Taiwan. In addition, the technological education standards of Taiwan are expressed in ambiguous sentences, and 10 of Taiwan’s technological literacy standards can be even categorized in the area of sentiment standard. Please refer to the details in Annex(1) and Annex(2).

5.2 Suggestions

(1) Although many examples can be found in the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, and each knowledge dimension is divided into minor dimensions with examples explaining the classification way, some of the standards are still different in the aspect of identification. Technological education workers have to make correct choices according to the formulated instructional goals.

(2) Currently, some researches have shown that the instruction of metacognitive knowledge can facilitate learning. “Learning how to learn” can more efficiently meet the needs of the new century, and is a significant objective to learners [12]. Both Taiwan and the United States highly emphasize the aspect of “metacognitive knowledge,” occupying 40% and 30.7% respectively. Therefore, technological education workers should apply “metacognitive knowledge” more.

(3) The contents of Taiwan’s elementary school technology education standards contain only 70 items of technological literacy standards, whereas the STL for elementary education stage of the United States has 109 items. Speaking of the quantity of technological literacy standards, the technology education of Taiwan is weaker. Besides, the items of technological standards of Taiwan are partly expressed in ambiguous sentences, and some of them still belong to the area of sentiment standard in the aspect of identification. Hence, when technological education workers are using the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, they have to appropriately consider the evaluation way of instruction.

(4) It is indicated in the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy that “procedural knowledge” refers to the knowledge about how to do something. [12] also point out that part of the procedural knowledge has always been regarded as the basic competences not belonging to academic knowledge, such as identification of direction, investigation, research on a small specific topic, etc., so that procedural knowledge has always been omitted easily. Nevertheless, the contents of Taiwan’s elementary school technology education standards contain only 13.3% in the content domain of “procedural knowledge,” in which there is even not a single item of “knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods,” being far lower than 24.8% of the STL for the American elementary school in the content domain of “procedural knowledge.” Because of this result, it is worthy of making in-depth investigation by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan while formulating the competence standards.

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