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From art and craft Éducation to design and technology Éducation: a thirty year story

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In 1985, France gives up manual and technical education for Technology Education (TE); the question of the teaching of this new subject as part of general education for all arose. With this introduction, the school opened at a large part of the human activity: design, engineering and product technical objects. This paper raises some questions in connection with the study of a specific field of knowledge, that of the TE, taken in a particular context, that of the process of teaching-learning. Examining the process of teaching-learning in TE supposes to affirm two strong preliminary: there is something to study in TE and there would be multiple conditions of study, even different. These two points allow the distinction between the matter to be taught and the manner of teaching; that need to bring meaningful to the interactions between these two poles. The definition of learning in school situations cannot be thought without thinking the organisations of the modes of transmission of knowledge and the logic of learning of the pupils. Thus, to affirm that the teaching of TE has something to see with the industrial production of technical objects (the matter to be taught) and with the organisation of this industrial production (manner to teach it). However, this relation does not make evidence and the hierarchies established for one have direct effects on the other, facilitating or preventing such or such choice.

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... Learning supposes building the procedural schemes and the semiotic schemes. This articulation between procedural and semiotic schemes defines new knowledge and its functionality (Ginestié, 2008b;Ginestié, 2009Ginestié, , 2010. The first form of acquisition, learning by discovering through action, is well adapted for learning procedures and giving meaning to the situation. ...
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