Talet om tekniska system: förväntningar, traditioner och skolverkligheter

In our society technology is becoming increasingly complex. Technological systems are now part of oureveryday lives. To what extent is this reflected in the Technology subject? This dissertation concerns education and has the aim of investigating how technological systems are treated in the Swedish school system. The overarching question is: How has the Swedish compulsory schooldealt with the pedagogical challenge of developing subject content about technological systems? To answer this question, the discourse of school talk on technological systems across three different school arenas has been the focus of the study so that pedagogical challenges and historical layers relating to thediscourse can be outlined. The three school arenas are the formulation, mediation, and realisationarena. They mainly encompass national curriculae, text books and teachers work, respectively, from1980 to 2009. On the realisation arena an interactive method has been used where the researcher collaborated with a team of teachers in a lower secondary school for two years.The results are presented in two ways. First, a set of offered companion meanings found in theexpressions on the arenas are presented. The companion meanings emanate from three kinds of rulesregulating the discourse: educational focus, system languages and curriculum emphases. Second, eacharena is discussed in detail. These discussions were arrived at by feeding the categories of companionmeanings back into the analysis process as a tool to clarify themes, orders of discourse and changesover time.On the arenas subject content relating to technological systems has successively strengthened itsposition and can be found on several curricular levels. This shift is made possible by new descriptions of technology as a distinct field of knowledge, thus affecting the view of the school subject Technology. In a Swedish context this meant dissociation from the natural sciences. Two hegemonic discourses thatmake the pedagogical challenge to introduce technological systems more difficult have also been found:the hegemony of the artefact and the hegemony of science. The first relates to the subject s internalinterest for small products and components. The second is based on a scientific precedence where Technology is used as an arena for the illustration of scientific laws and rules. Both hegemonies have the effect of directing the educational focus away from the systemic issues around the technology athand. The search for answers is turned inwards and downwards in the systemic hierarchy. On the otherhand, production systems and control technology have established a position in the discourse. An emerging political and ethical theme concerned with the relation between citizenship, sustainable development and technology has forwarded a systems approach.