Technological and Vocational Education for Development.

Introduction

The nature and the role of technical and vocational education as an

integrated part of overall system of education is explained .Three
concepts of technology, namely the Pythagorean concept, the
production function concept and the system concept of technology are
compared.

The variety of answers to the question- what is technology? are

presented. The difference , as also the two-way street between science
and technology, are addressed .Vocational education is expected to do
more than train an individual for a given occupation by providing the
person concerned with the necessary skills. It should also, in
conjunction with general education, provide for understanding,
judgment, self-expression and adaptation to varying environment .As
recommended by UNESCO, the cultural content of technical and
vocational education should be set at such a level that the inevitable
specializations in technical and vocational education do not stifle
broader interests.

Technology is presented as a powerful means, not an end in itself. The

principle of complimentarily is explained, and it is argued that there
should be no clear boundary between general and technical education.
While the general education aims at cultivating the mind to harmonize
it with the material world, the technical education aims at changing the
material world to suit the aspirations of the mind.

In planning scientific and technological education in the present epoch,

the new daring approach is to base plans of action on truths as yet
untested, and on technical feats not ascertain with experience .This
anticipatory method has an amplifying effect like the length of a lever.

The fact that, for a long time knowledge remained a speculative

activity, while technology was essentially empirical .This separation of
domains of science and technology explains the slow pace of progress
of both in the past centuries .While the overlapping of domains of
theoretical knowledge and empirical observations caused phenomenal
growth of both, which we call industrial revolution .

What is technology?

Technology has become so complex and is changing so fast that there is

no simple way of defining it .We rather picture technology in terms of
its performance .Thus we can say that technology is what technology
does .There are many ways that we can answer this question.

Technology is sum total of all human knowledge and techniques to

transform resources for the purpose of meeting human needs.

Technology is know how, while science is know why.

Technology makes things work better.

Technology represents the means by which we can control and modify

our natural environment.

Technology is the practical application of natural laws, discovered by

science.

It is the application of knowledge and the knowledge of application.

It is the engine of changing our environment.

The problems of high speed of the expansion of knowledge

The great speed at which knowledge is expanding has meant that all of
the sciences have had to be broken down into smaller domains, if a
reasonable standard is to be reached by students in the limited time of
stay in the educational institution.

A specialist has to narrow down his field of study in order to attain

greater depth in the topic of his pursuit. This fragmentation of the body
of knowledge creates the problem of communication even between
experts in different fields, not to speak of the general public.

Robert Oppenheimer characterized today’s scientific knowledge as

follows: It is mostly new; it has not been digested today. It is not part of
man’s common knowledge; it has become the property of specialized
communities,who may on occasions, help one another, but who, by and
large, pursue their own way with great intensity, further and further
from their roots in ordinary life. The Specialized disciplines have grown
like fingers of the hand, united in origin but no longer in contact.

I would like to extend this analogy to the situation, where experts with
their specialized knowledge need to cooperate, like fingers of the hand,
working in unison to solve a complex scientific and technological
problem.

As there has been fragmentations of sciences and technologies,

research in these fields have penetrated to deeper levels of scientific
truth. The gap between them is no longer so sharp and new
interdisciplinary subjects developed. In the applied science both
fragmentation and inter disciplinary studies have grown equally fast.
The problem of giving unity to expanding and fragmented curriculum
has therefore, become very urgent.

Scientific methods of thinking

Two basic elements of scientific way of thinking are skeptical criticism

and imaginative creativeness. If the degree of control over the
institutions of higher education is pushed to the level at which the spirit
of criticism is dull, sclerosis develops, and that dries up the source of
scientific discovery and technological innovations. At the same time, it
is generally not in the nature of administrators of an institution, to have
liking for the kind of eternal questioning which the breath of life to
science is. On the other hand such questioning, if irresponsible, can
reach a degree that threatens the stability of the organization running
the institutions.

Growth of Productivity

The observed growth of productivity in the developed countries is

mainly attributed to technological change, which in its turn is caused by
innovations. The technological innovation process is complex and there
is no simple way of transferring the experience and the newly gathered
knowledge by one country to another. This is because the diffusion of
technology is inherently a multi dimensional phenomenon. To address
this problem, an epistemology of technology is brought in. The
evolutionary nature of innovative activity and the various concepts of
technology are briefly discussed.

The importance of technological innovation and its propagation

through technical and vocational education is stressed.
Teaching is in its best form when teachers take part in research (even if
marginally) in the creation of new knowledge. Technological innovation
results from the exploitation of the discoveries and inventions.

Two distinct but related perspectives on the process of technological

development are presented .One is macro perspective and the other is
micro perspective.

University and Technology

One striking influence of science and technology is seen in the fact that,
in every country the preparation of students studying science and
technology increased in 19th century in the West. This took place
outside the universities, particularly in the schools of engineering and
polytechniques.

In the 20th century, the scientific and technological advances have not
only increased the number of departments within universities, but also
the number of institutions outside their walls. In some countries
conservatism and the persistence of old tradition have tended to deny
to these institutions a full university status.

In the Western Europe the general movement was in the direction of

bringing colleges of technology into closer association with universities.

This break with tradition came, firstly because technological progress is

so rapid and the social effects so wide spread, that future engineers
ought to be educated so as to be ready to adapt his work to new
discoveries and inventions.
Secondly, the change is based on the view that technology is not only
specialization among many, but an aspect of modern life that influences
every university discipline.

The growth of research has greatly stimulated the kind and intensity of
post graduate work undertaken by universities. In some countries the
post graduate research is carried out in institutions of higher
education .In others, technological research is mostly carried out in
industry or outside of university. In this case, the question of the
cooperation of university and non-university centers of research
becomes a pressing question.

The importance of research in developing countries:

In developing countries, the research function of education, in some

ways, is more important than in a developed industrial country. This is
because there are natural resources undiscovered and unutilized, and
there are unsolved scientific and technological problems which are
more relevant to the developing countries.

It is especially important that teaching in developing countries should

be done in an atmosphere of research. Ideally all teachers should also
be connected with some research work, so that the spirit of the
research, its enthusiasm, its reaching forward, its eager inspiration spills
over into their teaching.

It is recognized that only those who are advancing knowledge, and

rethinking the ideas of recent origin can convey to the students along
with knowledge, the thrill of the quest for truth.

Teaching reaches its highest level when it is shot through with a thread
of discovery. There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether all
this is a reflection of some lasting change in the pattern of innovative
activity. A thorough understanding of technological innovation process
is needed.

One eminent view of the process of technological education stems

from the work of Joseph Schumpeter dating back in the early 20th
century. According to him, the technological change has important
repercussion of an economic nature but, it has essentially no economic
causes .An equally eminent and somewhat related view of the process
of technological innovation comes from the work of sociologist Ogburn.
According to him, innovation activity follows an independent course
that is predetermined by the forces of historical necessity.

Against the background of general awareness of the importance of

innovative activity, a number of economic studies of technological
change were conducted. We brought a general conclusion articulated
by Jacob Chmookler was that innovative activity not only responded to
economic factors, but also could be explicated economic terms. Thus,
while earlier view used to be that technological change knew no
master, the more recent view is that it is wholly a captive of the socio
economic system.

It appears that neither of these two views can alone justify. Results
indicate that relevant patterns of technological innovations are
primarily physical and only secondarily of a socioeconomic nature.

We can conclude that socioeconomic studies of technological change

are important. However, knowledge of the inner mechanism of
innovation is equally important. Although the two types of treatment of
the phenomenon are complimentary, neither is a substitute for the
other. A parallel example of complimentarity and irreducibility is
statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.

In short the process of technological innovation is appropriately viewed

from within rather than exclusively from without. It is then a
particularly controllable process with profound implications of a
socioeconomic nature. The implication is that our grasp of the
technological change process is necessarily incomplete without a
comprehension of the inner dynamics of innovative process.

Resources for Technology

Resources are things we need to get a job done. Every technological

system makes use of seven types of resources. These are people,
information, materials, tools and machines, energy, capital and time. If
we define innovation by means of production function. The function
describes the way in which quantity of products varies, If quantity of
factors vary. If instead of quantities of factors, we vary the form of the
function, we get an innovation.

Let us look at each of these seven technological resources briefly.

Human resource

It is people who design and create technology, using their knowledge

and intelligence and also their physical labor. New technologies are
created constantly by people who combine previous knowledge with
new ideas.

Human intelligence and creativity are the keys to new technological

development. It is because of the efforts of so many workers that will
get the products and services to educate and train appropriate human
resources are the most important task for overall development.

Information

Every scientific technological activity requires a base of information and

modifies and creates new information. Technology has developed at an
accelerated rate during the last several decades. Based on the research
publications in science and technology, it is estimated that information
is now doubling every five years.

All these new information is being shared worldwide because of the

revolution in the communication system and increased cooperation
between nations. Information can be thought of as data. That I
processed for a particular use. In order to convert data into
information, the data must be collected, recorded, classified and
processed. Information turns into knowledge, when generalized to
interpret and control complex natural events.

Materials

Materials are very important resource in technology. In fact the whole

human civilization has been classified according to the type of material
used in different ages. Thus we have stone age, bronze age ,iron age
and now the silicon age. Materials are also classified as renewable, Non
renewable, natural and synthetic.

Modern civilization is based on the scientific understanding and

technological development of new materials. To explore, modify and
exploit the mechanical, electrical and magnetic materials constitute a
major task of material science and technology study.

Tools and machines

The whole of experimental research in science and technology is based

on observational tools and machines. Renaissance brought a shift from
logic to experience which led to the rebirth of science and technology.

Energy

Energy sources, like materials, are either renewable or non renewable.

Renewable sources include human and animal muscle power, water,
mint, geo thermal energy and solar energy. Non renewable energy
sources include oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy. Energy is the main
source of all physical changes and transformations.

Capital

Capital is any form of wealth. It can be cash money or property like

building equipments or lands.

Time

Every technological activity involves the use of different types of

resources in various combinations. In every such process there is a time
gap between import and output. Time thus appears an essential
parameter in every physical process.

The Conception of Technology

The term technology has numerous connotations, ranging from an

object of material culture with the tool of applied scientific knowledge.
The difficulty with some of these popular notions of technology is that
they are broad based and defy any useful operationalization of the
concept.

The formal concepts of technology, on the other hand, follow two

categorical view points. First, there is the neoclassical conception of
technology in the form of a production function. Second, there is the
Pythagorean concept of technology in terms of patented statistics and
chronological description of measure innovations. Proponent of these
viewpoints conceives that they suffer from several limitations. This has
led to a third concept of technology called system viewpoints, where
knowledge is best conceived in terms of its functional properties.

The production function concept of Technology

A production function concept of technology expresses the relationship

between various technologically feasible combinations of factors of
production and output. It is not nearly specification of the possible
combination of inputs employed in single production process. Rather it
is a specification of all conceivable modes of production in the light of
the existing technological knowledge about input output relationships.

The essence of production function concept lies in separation of

economic from purely technical factors in the choice of technique of
productions. According to Schumpeter, the process of technological
innovation consists of new ways in which factors of production can be
combined. An innovation consists of change in the very form of
production function.

In general, the production function concept has proved to be extremely

useful in providing a number of broad general options for macroscopic
policies. However, It has been much less useful in providing a
framework for analyzing technological innovation process. Its relevance
is primarily to an aggregated level of analysis.

Pythagorean Concept of Technology

The Pythagorean concept of technology is based on contributions from

fields as diverse as economics, History of Science, Sociology and
Physics. There are two characteristic features of this viewpoint. First
technological change is best conceived in terms of count of inventions
and discoveries. Second, the uniqueness and novelty of an event is of
crucial importance. Thus changes in an already existing technique are
generally excluded.

One great advantage of paten statistics is that patents need various

explicitly designed criteria of originality, technical feasibility and
commercial worth. However, they suffer from a number of drawbacks.
And index of patent inventions is merely a list of blue prints available. It
gives no information on small innovations. That is, whether the new
device is suitable for production and commercial use. It excludes the
process of development of technology involving the transition of a blue
print into a working device amenable to mass production. The main
point is that there relevance is primarily on origin rather than
development of new technique.

Systems Concept of Technology

The systems concept was envisaged simultaneously by two groups of

scientists with no awareness of each other’s work. Economists
concerned with the problems of appropriate technology in developing
countries belong to one group. The other group was formed by system
analysts concerned with the management of research and development
in industrialized countries. Although the two groups have little in
common, both hold that a technology is best conceived in terms of its
performance characteristics.

The system view of technology is appealing in many ways. First, the

functional measures of technology have very clearly defined meaning
and can be objectively measured. Second, functional measures of
technologies are of far more practical values for engineering and
managerial purposes than are the estimates of the neo classical
production functions. Third, functional measures of technology makes
it possible to take into account both major and minor innovations and
to assign appropriate weights to their importance. Fourth, it is evident
that one focal point to the system view of technology is changes in the
product characteristics. Fifth, the system view of technology gives
importance to problems of appropriate technology in developing
countries and management of R&D. the system view is suitable to the
micro level of analysis.

A detail analysis of the various models shows that a system concept has
a number of advantages over the neoclassical and the Pythagorean
concepts. Specifically, both the neoclassical and Pythagorean
viewpoints are based upon an antithesis of evolution; the system view
is of evolutionary in nature.

The three concepts are not mutually exclusive. They are complimentary
in their objectives and scope.

Relation between Science and Technology

There are important similarities as well as differences in technological

and scientific activity. In technological enterprise, synthesis of available
knowledge plays a far more important role than its analysis. In the
pursuit of pure science, analysis of available knowledge plays a more
important role than synthesis.

Design problems of technology take the form of inequality rather than

equality, but in science, equation of two sides is sought in a physical
law. Technology deals with large number of variables, while in science,
the number of variables are reduced to a few. In choosing technological
problems the time limit is very important. If a problem is taking too
long a time, it is usually dropped. But in scientific project, usually, there
is no time limit.

In the old age, when technological invention and scientific discovery

were in their primitive stages, there interdependence was negligible.
With the development of both science and technology, their domains
began to overlap, causing accelerated growth of both. One
characteristic feature of development is that, it leads to formation of a
system. The system in turn sets the boundary of further development.
This interplay of development and system formation is the essential key
to the understanding of long term change.