Technology and Engineering in STEM Education

What is deemed to be important for people to learn varies over time and evolves in relation to societal waves of change. Due to the essential roles technology and engineering (T&E) play in addressing global and environmental challenges, support for school-based T&E programs has markedly increased over the last decade. In addition to the workforce and economic imperatives, T&E are recognized contributors to sustainable development and transformative improvement in quality of life. This chapter examines commonalities and differences between technology and engineering as disciplinary domains and practices. As T&E alter and influence virtually every aspect of life, all students should learn about their impacts and affordances as part of their fundamental education. Because complex problems facing people globally require interdisciplinary solutions, STEM education has grown in popularity as an educational paradigm that draws upon knowledge from different domains as needed. Within STEM education, T&E experiences can be uniquely valuable for students—not only in providing an effective way to integrate and contextualize learning but also in mobilizing engineering and design thinking as a way for people to approach problems of all kinds. As there are striking similarities between the requirements for undergraduate engineering majors and undergraduate technology education majors, a case is made that with focused preservice or in-service professional development, T&E teachers can be well-qualified to teach engineering-oriented curricula in school-based programs. Attention is paid to curricular and instructional starting points (e.g., content standards, overarching thematic ideas, and design challenges in authentic learning contexts).