In England and Wales, the Education Reform Act had enacted in July, 1988. The Act had introduced technology as a foundation subject, and then, Technology in the National Curriculum was established in March, 1990. This meant that, in the states, a nationwide framework of the technology curriculum during primary and secondary educational periods, from first to eleventh year, i.e., from the first to the fourth key stage (KS1-4), was set up, and that technology education would be taken for all pupils at each maintained school legally, in accordance with its framework. The Curriculum had consisted of the attainment targets based upon four design processes (identifying needs and opportunities, generating a design, planning and making, evaluating) and the programmes of study, in same format up to KS4, provided knowledge and skills which should be instructed and learned conforming to the processes. Both had required activity-based instruction and learning assuming to the processes. The other, when the Curriculum had established, GCSE The National Criteria, Craft, Design and Technology had already been established. The Criteria had provided three specialised courses and had a framework consisted of knowledge and skills, and had emphasized the learning of each of knowledge and skills rather than that of activity-based learning assuming to the processes. Technology textbooks published after the establishment of the Curriculum had the centres of the contents of textbooks in compiling, which could describe as the design processes and the design areas. In textbooks, the former meant a chain of the procedures for pupils' design activities such as generating ideas, designing, planning, making, evaluating, etc., and the latter meant the groups of knowledge and skills which should be learned by pupils through the processes, such as materials, energy, structures, electronics, mechanisms, etc. At KS1-3, they were realised in activity-based contents assuming to the processes. At KS4, textbooks were specialised in three courses and each of them emphasized the learning of each of knowledge and skills rather than that of activity-based learning assuming to the processes. Therefore, it seems that the contents of technology textbooks at primary and early secondary educational stages were influenced by the Curriculum and that, at mid-secondary stage, they were directly influenced by the Criteria. And further, it may be inferred from their analysis that the real contents of education at each school had also been reflecting such conditions. In these circumstances, as a certain and reliable methodology in the historical study of the contents of technology education in England and Wales, the following two methods are induced; one is the method, by analysis of the provisions of the Curriculum, to try to perform and establish such studies, and the another is, by analysis of the provisions of the Criteria related to technology education in the Certificates of Education (GCSE, GCE, CSE, etc.), to try to do that. Above all, it seems that the latter method has not a little validity of analysis, because we can assume that the contents of technology textbooks at mid-secondary stage had further been under the influence of the Criteria since the establishment of the Curriculum. From a different point of view, a certain validity was not found until the Curriculum was established, and in this respect the establishment of the Curriculum was such a landmark.
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