Whole-task Focused Instructional Design For Technology Curriculum In High School

With the rapid development of contemporary technology,technology curriculum is becoming more and more important in primary and secondary schools.In China,technology curriculum in high school includes information technology and general technology curriculums.The general technology is a relatively basic technology in the contemporary technology system,which is widely used in daily life applications,has rich educational values,and is distinguished from professional technology.It is an essential technology for students to adapt to social life,higher education and career development.The general technology curriculum aims to improve students' core literacy,with design learning and operational learning as the main features.It is a curriculum based on practice,focusing on creation and embodying the unity of science and technology.There is a big challenge for general technology curriculum to implement the advanced curriculum idea and realize the unique educational value.With the newly revised general technology curriculum standard of high school published in China in 2017,the general technical classroom teaching is further challenged.This study aims to propose an instructional design model that is suitable for technology curriculum teachers and helps to promote students literacy.This study uses a design-based research approach,with two teacher-oriented implementations and one classroom-based instruction during 2017 and 2018,resulting in two iterations and three versions of instructional design models.The research uses experiments,observations,interviews and collects physical objects to obtain the first-hand information needed.It also analyses the five aspects based on teachers' use,comparison of pre-test and post-test between experimental class and control class,students' process performance,students' reflective experience and classroom teaching observation.This study proposes an instructional design model which takes situations,tasks,activities and basic problems as the main line and focuses on whole-tasks.The model adheres to the idea of learning for the real world,and proposes that technology learning should focus on the unity of personal authenticity,world authenticity,and academic authenticity.Compared with the traditional teaching design,which focuses on task analysis and teaching process design,this model focuses on task design and emphasizes that task design is more important than the design of the teaching process.After the meaningful whole-task is determined,the elements of instructional design revolve around it.Therefore,task design being more important than task analysis,task design prior to design of teaching process,considering structured knowledge and complete task,and focusing on unit design comprise the four basic theories of whole-task focused instructional design.There are three stages in whole-task focused instructional design.The first stage initially determines the task by analyzing the content of the course and the literacy or abilities.In the second stage,the factors and levels of literacy are cleared to determine learning objectives and formulate task performance rubrics.The third stage is the detailed design of the whole-task,which puts strong emphasis on the real,complex and changeable problem situation,the design of the true whole-task and the corresponding support and guidance of the task.In this stage,the design of task group is one of the most important steps.The task group not only emphasizes the sequence of the tasks,but also the connection between them.This study puts forward two types of task groups led by big concepts or big processes relatively.The purpose of the model examination is on one hand to evaluate the attractiveness,efficiency,and effectiveness of the model.On the other hand,problems can be found for improvement.Additionally,how to learn technical design is researched.The study finds that the process of design not only focuses on the solution,it also involves the use of a number of cognitive strategies,including comparison,trade-off and decision-making,iterative and optimization.The result shows the teaching of whole-tasks helps to cultivate students design ability.The support and guidance of the task is a great help to the students.The study also finds that the model is an appeal to teachers.As a practical and theoretical study,whole-task focused instructional design can be implemented in technology curriculum.And the study of whole-task design helps to make up for the existing task-centered instructional design.The revealing of how to learn design is the basis of the research and practice in technology curriculum.