Design education is in need of a wider restructuring to accommodate new developments and paradigmatic shifts brought forth by the information age, all of which capitalise a move towards complexity theory, systems science and digital technologies. The intention of this article is to approach one particular aspect of this need: that is, how basic…

Decades of research have reported declining trends in undergraduate industrial arts, industrial technology education, technology education, and technology and engineering (T&E) teacher preparation programs (TPPs) (Love et al., 2016; Moye, 2017; Scott & Buffer, 1995; Volk, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2019). Numerous reasons have been cited for this…

Purpose: This paper narrates a case study on design thinking-based education work in an industrial design honours program. Student projects were developed in a multi-disciplinary setting across a Computing and Engineering faculty that allowed promoting technologically and user-driven innovation strategies. Design/methodology/approach: A renewed…

Today's growing business competition demands that design and technology must be seamlessly integrated. Designers should be employed increasingly as in-house in the industry, in addition to entrepreneurship and consultancy employment. How to realise this aim? Industry training is a tradition in engineering studies, but that is rarely the case in…

Students sometimes find introductory drafting and design a boring subject. They must learn the basic skills necessary for drafting and architecture and this may require repetition in order to reinforce those skills. One way to keep students interested is to have them draw objects they encounter in their own lives instead of abstract machine parts…

Like the "phoenix," technology education (TE) can, under the right circumstances, give life to new programs--curricula with different emphases and directions from technology education, yet sharing a common heritage: the belief that applied technology will continue to shape the world. How that shaping process takes place--and the problems that it…

San Jose State College in California has special features in its course for industrial arts teachers. Ralph C. Bohn, Chairman of the College's Department of Industrial Studies, describes the course and the reasons for its special character. (Editor)

The Industrial Arts Fellowship Program provides an opportunity for 24 experienced teachers to pursue graduate study related to two occupational clusters: industrial materials and processes or energy and propulsion systems. As part of their studies, students developed, field tested, and evaluated curriculum materials which applied these evolving…

This article explores project-based cross-cultural and cross-institutional learning. Using Web 2.0 technologies, this project involved more than 240 students and eighteen academic staff from seven international universities. The focus of this article relates to a project-based learning activity named "The Gift". At each institution the…

The description of the Miami University (Ohio) project shows how the idea for community involvement was generated and presents a resource utilization model. (MS)

The first in a series of articles on implementing a plastics course in the junior high or senior high school industrial arts program. (Editor)