Research On History And Logic Of Technological Education

Most of the existing Technological Education (TE) studies are mainly discussion on TE within education system with different concept of it, while, to a large extent, the practical application of TE exceeds the scope of educational science study. The existing studies haven’t provided a satisfying answer to the questions helpful to understand completely the nature and features of TE, such as what is TE? What characteristics are there in its historical improvement? And what will be the future of modern TE? Therefore, the paper tries to analyze the nature and features of TE at a view of scientific technology and society (STS) for the purpose of further complete cognition on TE with a wider insight of cross-subject.At the view of STS, taking "technology, education and society" as analyzing unit, focusing on TE problems, the author analyzes and discusses the questions through a comprehensive utilization of related knowledge in many other fields such as technological philosophy and history, educational philosophy and history, history of social development, economics, political science and sociology. In the procedure of the study, the methodology of unifying history and logic is applied, that is, to combine technological history, educational history and social history and clarify the relationship of the three in historical sense, meanwhile to consider TE problems in systematical levels of cross-countries, internationalization, regions, walks, entrepreneurs and individuals in simultaneous sense.Firstly, the TE concept is defined. It provides a broad understanding and application of the concept. TE is understood as a practical activity to train, form and improve social technological ability as a whole through teaching technological knowledge, fostering technological skills and learning social influence of technology. The extension of TE in a broad sense, from a simultaneous sense, includes TE in full-time formal education system and the part-time further education, in-service training, employees’professional training, etc. From a historical sense, it includes the traditional forms of TE before the pre-historical society and the TE with schools as its main form in industrial society and post-industrial society.Secondly, the phase division basis for TE is discussed. Generally TE is divided into three periods as pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial society. This paper focuses on analyzing the characteristics of three different stages. The four traits of TE in pre-industrial society are described, namely①the practicability feature;②the live feature;③the experiential feature;④organizational feature. Industrial society provides a special premise for the establishment of TE, the procedure of it includes the gradual evolvement of new TE forms to meet the needs of industrial society and the gradual disintegration of the old apprentice system. In the course of disintegration and evolvement, with the accumulation of long period in industrial society, the relatively stable features come into being, which includes:①the economy supremeness of TE functions;②the duality feature of TE contents;③the school system of ET form;④nationalization feature of TE evolution.It is discussed that post-industrial society as a new social formation raises a new demand for TE and promote it to develop rapidly. In the course of adapting to the society, there are four new developing trends of TE:①emphasizing knowledgeable and intellectualization features of TE;②reinforcing the training of creative ability in TE;③technological accomplishment education being added into TE with broad permeability and popularity;④the trend of unifying TE and normal education.Thirdly, in the course of disintegration and evolvement, with the accumulation of long period, the relatively stable features come into being, which includes:①the variety of TE functions;②the complex feature of TE contents;③the variety of TE forms;④constructive feature of TE progress.Fourthly, there is a rational analysis and evaluation on the present historical stage of TE in China. TE in modern times China is divided into three periods as the beginning of TE, the establishment of TE institute and the reform of development of New PRC. The phased feature of TE in contemporary China is inspected, it is proposed that there are features of industrial society and trends of post-industrial society at the present historical stage of TE in China. This is the special situation of contemporary TE in China, which is the primary basis and reality to realize and consider TE development in China. TE in contemporary China should serve the People’s Livelihood Engineer, transformation from "Made in China" to "Created in China", the human’s all-round development and Harmonious society construction.Fifth, the four problems of contemporary TE in China are discussed in detail:①the conflicts and contradictions between instrument rationality and value rationality;②game of stakeholders in TE;③imbalance compatibility of the systematic structure of TE;④the perplexity of TE curriculum. The four proposals are hold:①the coordinating feature of the economic function of TE and other social functions;②the integrate among the stakeholder of TE;③the consummating feature of the systematic structure of TE;④the diversity of TE pattern.TE has received more and more attention around the world under the international competitive environment at the age of global economic unification. There has been an important theoretical and practical meaning on aspects of how to make a good use of TE in social economic development and human welfare service, to study and utilize TE at the level of scientific technology and society (STS), especially to analyze the features of TE.