Teaching and Learning in Technology: Section Introduction

Abstract

For most of the previous two centuries teaching has occurred with one teacher and 20–40 students in one classroom using a teacher-centered approach to teaching. Learning in this “classic” type class room focused on the predetermined learning of discipline-based facts, knowledge, and skills with some subsequent application in frequently contrived unfamiliar or outdated contexts. With the introduction of the twenty-first century, we are seeing a significant shift in teaching philosophy and approaches to learning. Teaching pedagogies and spaces need to become more flexible to facilitate a wider range of students’ interests and needs and include the development of skills and knowledge and dispositions vital for twenty-first century living such as: collaboration, cooperation, critical thinking, and problem solving skills, while at the same time ensuring “curriculum content” knowledge is not lost, but available to students when needed.