Links in the Technology learning area

Achievement Objectives

Describe the outcome and identify the essential attributes.

Consider needs, opportunities, and available resources. (Use this to promote creative thinking.)

Students ask themselves, "Is this my very own plan or did I get it from someone else? Can I use someone else's plan if I ask them first?"

Indicators of Progression

Describe the outcome, and identify attributes of their outcome.

Students should reflect on these questions: Is the outcome my own plan? If not, did I ask?

Achievement Objectives

Outline a general plan to support the development of an outcome and identify appropriate steps and resources.

One appropriate step can include asking permission to borrow or use someone else's plan or name.

Indicators of Progression

Describe what they have done already and the resources they have used so far. (A resource can be the owner of a plan or idea.)

Describe the steps they have to do to complete their outcome. Include requests for permission to use other people's ideas or propucts.

Identify the resources they will use to complete their outcome.

Investigate a context to communicate potential outcomes.

Evaluate these against attributes.

Select and develop an outcome in keeping with the identified attributes.

Indicators of Progression

Provide conceptual ideas that communicate possible outcomes.

Evaluate possible outcomes in terms of identified attributes and select an outcome to develop.

Develop an outcome in keeping with identified attributes. The name of the outcome should be original.

Achievement Objective

Justify the nature of an intended outcome in relation to the need or opportunity.

Include details if any parts of this outcome design have been borrowed from an existing design or outcome. 

Describe the key attributes. Attributes taken from an existing plan require acknowledgement – include this in stakeholder feedback, which will inform the development of an outcome and its evaluation.

Indicators of Progression

Identify an appropriate need or opportunity (appropriateness also refers to the sourcing of what is required for a successful outcome).

Acknowledgement of, and required procedures for the use of existing plans and designs) to the established context and issue, and develop a conceptual statement to justify what they are developing and why.

Establish key attributes from initial information.

Undertake refinement and/or modification of their conceptual statement and key attributes as based on their developing knowledge and skills, including understandings of the context/issue and feedback from stakeholders.

Define key attributes that allow them, their teacher and stakeholders to evaluate the fitness for purpose of their outcome.

Achievement Objective

Undertake planning that includes reviewing the effectiveness of past actions and resourcing.

Explore implications for future actions and accessing of resources (consider the sourcing of these resources as to whether or how they can be incorporated).

Consider stakeholder feedback, to enable the development of an outcome.

Indicators of Progression

Establish key stages and critical resources, such as how to use existing ideas or how to integrate plans and outcomes based on previous experience.

Evaluate and identify implications for future actions.

Establish links between their past and current practices and explain how this may affect (either positively or negatively) the development of an outcome that meets the brief.

Seek out and use stakeholder feedback to inform development work – particularly material selection.

Plan ahead, to ensure completion of outcome, and undertake effective documentation to support their practice.

Select and access the key resources (acknowledge source and appropriate procedures, including knowledge and skills) required to complete their outcome.

Achievement Objective

Investigate a context to develop ideas for feasible – and if possible, original – outcomes.

Undertake functional modelling that takes account of stakeholder feedback, in order to select and develop the outcome that best addresses the key attributes.

Incorporating stakeholder feedback, evaluate the outcome's fitness for purpose in terms of how well it addresses the need or opportunity.

Indicators of Progression

Determine suitability (include consideration of IP) of initial resources to enable the development of the outcome.

Create (through research and functional modelling that incorporates input from stakeholders) conceptual ideas – and if possible, original. These should communicate feasible outcomes and incorporate key attributes what will address the need or opportunity. Also, consider material availability and suitability.

Carry out ongoing reflection and functional modelling to test, evaluate, and refine potential outcomes.

Develop an outcome that incorporates all key attributes established and addresses the identified need or opportunity using prototyping as appropriate.

Use stakeholder feedback as evidence to support the evaluation of their final outcome's fitness for purpose in terms of how it well it addresses the need or opportunity.

Achievement Objective

Justify the nature of an intended outcome in relation to the context and the issue to be resolved.

Give reasons for specifications in terms of key stakeholder feedback and wider community considerations.

Indicators of Progression

To establish a feasible context and issue suitable for Technological Practice, critically evaluate a range of contexts and associated issues, 

Assess the established issue and identify a need or opportunity that is justified based on the physical and social environment.

A brief should clearly communicate an outcome that allows for the resolution, or realization, of the issue. It should justify this in terms of the broader context of the initiative.

Be sure to develop a brief that addresses the opportunities and constraints on the outcome and the practice.

As students develop skill, knowledge, understanding of physical and social environments, and receive feedback from stakeholder, modify the brief.

Develop specifications that allow students, teachers, and stakeholders to evaluate the fitness for purpose of their outcome in its broadest sense.

Achievement Objective

Critically analyse their own and others' past and current planning and management practices.

Establish and carry out project management practices that will ensure the efficient development of an outcome to completion.

Indicators of Progression

• Develop an initial plan that allows for extensive exploratory work to establish a suitable context and issue, and subsequent need or opportunity to be determined and evaluated.
•  Carry out ongoing critical analyses and evaluation of their own and others' past and current planning, and self and team management practices.
•  Make informed projections about future activities that are supported by use of dynamic planning tools developed to manage, document and justify planning decisions in terms of the physical and social environment in which their brief is embedded.
•  Organise and evaluate learning experiences to gain new knowledge and skills identified in planning as being needed to develop their outcome.
•  Critically evaluate the management of learning activities, opportunities and/or constraints resulting from specific practices undertaken, and the management of resources in an ongoing manner throughout Technological Practice, and justify these, in terms of the physical and social environment in which their practice is occurring, to address the context and issue

Achievement Objective

Analyse all outcomes and determine their fitness for purpose.

Undertake a critical evaluation that is informed by ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, stakeholder feedback, trialling in the physical and social environments, and an understanding of the issue as it relates to the wider context.

Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop an outcome.

Evaluate this outcome's fitness for purpose against the brief.

Justify the evaluation using feedback from stakeholders and demonstrating a critical understanding of the issue that takes account of all contextual dimensions.

Indicators of Progression

Carry out ongoing critical analyses of all outcomes, with particular regard to each outcome's fitness for purpose in the broadest sense.

Develop (through research and functional modelling justified by key, wider community stakeholders' feedback and historical and contemporary issues related to the context) conceptual ideas that communicate outcomes that are justifiable in terms of its fitness for purpose in the broadest sense.

Justify the suitability of materials to enable the development and production of an outcome appropriate to the physical and social environment in which it will be developed and placed, and clearly explaining the contribution selected resources make to their outcome's fitness for purpose (in the broadest sense).

Develop an outcome and justify key decisions through:

• informed functional modelling (based on developing knowledge and skills) that test, evaluate and refine their evolving outcome
• prototyping to trial and evaluate their outcome within the physical and social environment in which it will be placed.

Critically evaluate their developing and final outcome's fitness for purpose against the brief, issue and context, using key and wider community stakeholder feedback to justify its fitness for purpose in the broadest sense.