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Reasons for teaching electronics

This short article articulates some of the reasons for teaching electronics in schools.

This short article articulates some of the reasons for teaching electronics in schools. Any one school will need to assemble the argument for introducing or increasing electronics in the curriculum by selecting aspects of these reasons according to local conditions and interests. The justification for curriculum change in a rural area in which there is little if any electronics based employment opportunities will be different from an urban area in which there is say, significant technical research and development being championed by the Regional Development Agency.

Typically arguments for the inclusion of work with electronics in the curriculum (and within D&T) fall under the following headings:

  1. The intrinsic interest of the subject
  2. The opportunity for modes of learning not available elsewhere in the curriculum
  3. The pervasiveness of electronics in the world outside school
  4. The opportunity for pupils to experience a domain which opens up technical career possibilities
  5. 'UK plc', and the electronics industry in particular, needs technically orientated workers

These arguments are examined briefly below.

The intrinsic interest of the subject

Unfortunately intrinsic interest is a very subjective business. Most teachers (we would hope) find their own subject intrinsically interesting, but inherent interest on the part of pupils is likely to be limited to a minority, largely made up of children who have prior positive experiences either in primary school or at home.

However the evidence from the EiS programme (Murphy et al, 2004) is that pupils most definitely can become interested in electronics as a subject through a combination of good teaching and exciting contexts, backed up by high quality teaching resources. There is accumulating evidence that the use of ICT in teaching can be highly motivating for pupils (BECTA 2003) and this seems to be linked, amongst other things, to pupils' ability to exert control over some aspect of their environment.

Electronics, taught in the right way, offers similarly compelling opportunities for exerting control; a point expanded in the next section.

The opportunity for modes of learning not available elsewhere in the curriculum

The claim here is that there are things that the teaching of electronics offers that are hard to achieve in other subjects. At first sight this seems an implausible claim, since electronics isn't even a 'subject' in its own right in secondary education; merely a 'field' of D&T. What might electronics offer in terms of learning which other areas of D&T and other subjects do not?

One strand of the answer to this question lies in the constructionist view of learning.

Constructionism lies in the broad stream of constructivist theories of learning and has been developed by Seymour Papert and others (Papert, 1980, 1994, Kafai & Resnick, 1996). The core argument of Constructionism is that people learn best when they are making something (be it a sandcastle on the beach or a theory in physics) because of the powerful interaction between thinking and action during construction.

Learning is most powerful when two conditions apply; the construction environment is rich and there is ample opportunity to view the success of one's construction efforts (feedback).

Originally Constructionism was an argument for putting children in control of computers through the use of LOGO; a programming language with a 'low floor and a high ceiling (easy to get into but limitless in its applications); the child should control the computer, not the computer control the child.

This work soon grew to encompass robotics where the programming of the computer controlled not simply what happened on screen but also events in the real world. Here the link to modern ECT work becomes clear; work with embedded programmable (PIC) electronic systems can provide a uniquely rich construction environment with ample opportunity for feedback on the success of construction efforts.

The nature of D&T is that it the subject area most likely to have the curriculum flexibility to allow pupils to engage in constructionist activity and ECT is probably the richest constructionist medium within D&T - though the arguments made here should be made equally passionately within other fields of D&T.

A second strand of answer to the question of what it is that electronics might offer in terms of learning which other areas of D&T and other subjects do not, lies in cross-curricular linking. The claim is made of D&T education that it draws on the content of a wide range of curriculum areas, yet we know that, in practice, this is not a straightforward process (Barlex & Pitt, 2000).

However electronics is a particularly rich subject for making links, particularly connecting content from Mathematics, Science and ICT to work in D&T. If this linking is to be taken seriously then the recommendations of Barlex and Pitt (2000) in the Engineering Councils' 'Interaction' report need to be taken seriously:

  • Effective cross-curricular work relies on appropriate relationships between subjects that need fostering.
  • Monitoring is required to ensure that such work does benefit learning.

There needs to be much better dissemination of good practice in this area.

The pervasiveness of electronics in the world outside school

Electronics, increasingly, is becoming embedded in the fabric of our material and social lives. The electronics industry underpins almost all other business activity, including product and service development, product manufacture, and service provision. So all children, in a rounded educational experience, should have some exposure to how the technical world they live in is constructed and operated.

There are supporting arguments based on both practicality and principle. The practicality argument is that a part of the purpose of education is that it should enable children to grow into adults who are at ease in their society. Part of being at ease is having insight into, and being able to interact effectively with, the technologies that support society.

The argument from principle is based on justice. The expansion of electronics into every corner of personal and social life, combined with the ever decreasing size and cost of circuitry provides, as with all technological developments, the opportunity for developments that contain both good and ill (and, more often than not, a confusing mixture of these).

How good and ill are defined will usually rely on arguments in politics and philosophy, but without appropriate understanding of the underlying technology people's ability to interact with the philosophical and political arguments will be severely hampered (as is currently seen with depressing frequency in the adult world).

Both arguments lead to questions of what, exactly, is an appropriate understanding of electronics for these two purposes and how we can best construct a curriculum to meet these needs.

The general thrust of the curriculum development undertaken by the ECT initiative has been to focus (alongside modernisation) on a systems-based approach to teaching in this area (Steeg, 2000). Systems-based teaching in the area of ECT is, at heart, an argument about starting points and progression; teaching should start with broad principles and simple everyday concepts and progress to deeper detail and more advanced concepts, as these are needed to support the work pupils are doing and as their cognitive development allows.

There is little point teaching Ohm's law (for example) to most year 7 pupils; they don't need it to do interesting work in ECT, they almost certainly aren't confident with the necessary algebraic manipulations to use the equation confidently and the underlying concepts are so abstract that even if they do the mathematics they are very unlikely to understand what the equation represents.

By year 9, however, many more pupils will have the algebraic experience from their maths curriculum, will have met some of the concepts in their science teaching and may well have a technological purpose (limiting current flow) for engaging with, and reinforcing these skill and knowledge areas. Clearly there are opportunities here for the effective collaboration between science and D&T as well as mathematics argued for in the Interaction report.

The opportunity for pupils to experience a domain which opens up technical career possibilities

Broadly put, the aims of education are to prepare young people for life - and that includes work.

At the same time the electronics industry provides a significant range of employment opportunities. Thus it makes a great deal of sense to include in the electronics curriculum opportunities for pupils to learn about how the electronics industry works alongside learning about how electronics works. This can be achieved through visits by pupils to manufacturing or design plants, through visits by representatives of the industry such as Science and Engineering Ambassadors (SEAS) and through the use of case study materials in a range of media including paper, video and the Web.

It is worth noting at this point that, as with all subjects, teachers will have two types of pupil in the workshop; those (the majority) who need a good general education that includes electronics and those who are likely to go on onto a career in the area and may wish a deeper exposure to information about careers in the field.

'UK plc', and the electronics industry in particular, needs technically orientated workers

This is clearly true. But it raises the complex (and much argued) issue of how the roles of schools (focussed on providing a general education to all young people) and companies (concentrating on training them to do a particular job) should be balanced.

The reality is that some pupils, given engaging experiences with electronics during their education, may well become predisposed towards a technical career. This is a strong supporting argument for electronics having a place in the curriculum for all pupils.

But the development of such a predisposition cannot become a core aim for school-based education for a very pragmatic reason; there are simply too many 'important' careers for education to pick from. In any case the needs of industry for technically oriented workers may not provide a strong case for electronics in the curriculum; industry's demands are for engineer and technician level workers where the core requirement is a good grounding in mathematics and science.

What education can, and should, offer is to provide all pupils with a high quality and wide range of educational experiences (including electronics) so that they have the necessary educational and personal qualifications for a technical career and are aware of the employment possibilities.

Using the arguments in ElSS professional development

Teachers will need to discuss justifications for curriculum change at the professional development sessions implemented by the Hubs for several reasons:

  • To develop their own reasons for making change.
  • To develop reasons that will convince other D&T teachers at their school.
  • To develop reasons to present to the senior management team To explain the reasons for a change in the curriculum to both parents and pupils.

It is important that they appreciate that there are several different reasons and that to be effective in making their case they will need to select from these according to their local conditions and the intended audience. Some professional development time should be used to help teachers critique the five reasons outlined above and acquire fluency in presenting their own arguments.

(David Barlex and Torben Steeg December 2005)