 |
"My
thesis offers an explanation for the inadequate response by our
society to the subject of technology..." more... |
Evidence of a problem |
 |
 |
What
is the Culture of Tools?
The
culture of tools refers to the creative activity pursued by
humankind to make tools in order to enhance productivity and
capability for the purposes of survival. more... |
The Owers Lecture Can we reverse the decline in schools' computing, especially with girls?- on December 10th 2009 Kate Sim will present her work teaching robotics with Prof Stephen Heppell responding. They follow Pete Williamson & Jamie Tuplin with Mick Waters in 2008, Jeff Roche & Raj Rajogopal in 2007, Dr Ian Gibson MP in 2006 and the inagural lecture from Dr Stan Owers in 2004 |
|
How does the Culture of Tools impact on our lives? Education and industry are two parts of the same society. We are totally dependent on our tool culture in order to function. more... |
How have these issues been tackled before now? They
haven't! Essentially, education policy is culturally driven.
A conflict has long been experienced between educational ideals
and the low intellectual esteem attributed to "working with
one's hands". more... |
Downloads & Further Research All of Stan's research outputs and lecture notes may be dowloaded and distributed freely. Stan has repeated part of his research to check for emerging trends, this is published as a report: 'Our hidden curriculum: a comparison of two surveys in Technology and other subjects.' more... |
|
| Why is the Culture of Tools an issue? It is an issue because our tool-culture was never regarded as important in the field of education, but our modern technology evolved from our tool-culture... more... |
What can be done to improve the situation? Teachers and policy-makers need to think differently, and recognise that the skills and aptitudes used in our 'wealth creation' activities represent an intellectual challenge... more... |
||
| |
|||
Dr Stan Owers November 2009 Download the Thesis and its appendices |
 |
||
