Enduring Understandings
Enduring understandings is what students will understand as a result of successfully completing the unit. Enduring understandings are also know as learning goals.
Enduring understandings is the concepts students understand five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or more years after the concepts are learned. They are the "big picture" concepts that students will never forget and will always understand. Enduring understandings is necessary, because content and methods change, but the foundations of the subject will always remain the same.
Teaching, which focuses on understanding will waste little of students' time. Students will not be forced to memorize and recall information that they will simply forget one to two weeks after it was learned.
Example Technology Education Enduring Understandings
* Systems thinking helps solve technological problems
* Technological products or systems follow reoccurring patterns.
* Design is the consideration of multiple factors.
* The technological design process helps solve technological problems.
* Technology changes over time.
* Technological products and systems have positive and negative impacts
* Technological design and development has ethical considerations.
* There are many ways to communicate messages.
Understanding should be the ultimate goal of every technology education program or course. Often in technology education, too much emphasis is placed on specific skills, rather than enduring understandings. For example, the teaching of Computer Aided Drafting is a common class in most secondary schools. The foal of these programs is to assist students in mastering the operations of software programs, Just because students are mastering the CADD, does not guarantee that students are mastering the concepts of design and problem solving. CAFF software is a tool, not a concept.
Technology teachers need to restructure courses so that understanding is the goal. Students should understand the importance of tools and software in the design and development of new inventions and innovations, but technology education involves much more than teaching specific skills. Today students need to understand technology.
