Similarities and Differences between the Current Course of Study in Technology Education in Japan from 2008, “Design and Technology" in the National Curriculum in England from 2014 and Standards for Technological Literacy in the USA from 2000

This study compared similarities and differences in the aims and contents between the current Course of Study in technology education in Japan from 2008, “Design and Technology” in the National Curriculum in England from 2014 and standards for technological literacy of ITEEA from 2000. The results are summarized as follows: (1) Technology education as a general education in Japan has been implemented only at the lower secondary education level and standards for a systematic curriculum for elementary and upper secondary schools have yet to be established. (2) The technology content in Japan consists of four learning areas; that is, materials and their processing, energy conversion, nurturing living things and information processing though nurturing living things. Information processing has not been introduced in Design and Technology. In contrast, programming of information processing has been established in Computing within the new National Curriculum. (3) The concept of the technological design process has not been established in technology education in Japan but it has been emphasised for pupils in Design and Technology in England and the Standards for Technological Literacy in the USA. (4) The Course of Study for technology has enabled students to be aware of the value of generating and utilizing new ideas and has fostered the attitude of creating and using intellectual property rights even though students have not studied what “Innovation” entails directly in Japan. In contrast, “Innovation” is one of the key points in Design and Technology and it emphasises the development of creative thinking skills to anticipate and improve every possible risk through immediate subjects according to the pupils’ stage of development. As for the Standards for Technological Literacy in USA, emphasis has been on helping pupils to develop the ability to manipulate activities in accordance with critical thinking skills and to practice such activity in collaboration with the other subjects such as Science, Mathematics and Language through the Learning Units in the I3 Project, Invention-Innovation and Inquiry.