Technology Education in School and Industry : Emerging Didactics for Human Resource Development

The economic and social developments in the world continually pose new questions to both the social and physical sciences, to the state and to the economy. Currently, the social, natural, and technological fields are particularly impacted by these developments. The facilitation of scientific insights and the utilization of the assembled knowledge of millions of people in their daily work has evolved key questions about the very existence and continuation of society. In a time where almost anything is technically possible, the means of advancing/facilitating (didactics) technological capabilities are being pursued with even more fervor than the actual hunt for new technological capabilities - at least by the most far-seeing nations. In comparison to natural resources, it is a nations human resources and their combined capability that is infinite. The development of these capabilities was the impetus for this workshop. To this challenge and process, new, hitherto unknown tasks and needs have emerged to energize the dynamic even further. Currently characterizing this search are key words and concepts that include interdisciplinarity, cognitive science, complexity, personal competence, synergistic competence, human resource development, technological literacy, school-industry links (partnerships), private practice partnerships, cognitive apprenticeship, reengineering education, concurrent education, hypermedia, meta-cognition, etc.