Resources for Planning the Framework

Any NAEP framework must be guided by NAEP purposes as well as by the policies and procedures of the Governing Board, which oversees NAEP. For NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy, the main purpose of the framework is to establish what students should know about and be able to do with technology and to set forth criteria for the design of the 2014 assessment and future assessments. Meeting this purpose requires a framework built around what the communities involved in technology, technology education, educational technology, and technology and engineering literacy consider to be the knowledge and skills that are most important for NAEP to report.

In prioritizing the content, the framework developers used the NAEP Technological Literacy Steering Committee Guidelines (summarized later in this chapter). These guidelines recommended drawing from the following sources:

• Existing technology standards from various individual states;
• National Education Technology Standards by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2007);
• Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEA, 2007);
• Framework for 21st Century Learning from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21, 2007);
• Influential technology standards from other countries (e.g., the United Kingdom);
• The Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (National Assessment Governing Board, 2008);
• Benchmarks for Science Literacy from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1993);
• The National Science Education Standards from the National Research Council (NRC, 1996);
• Definitions of technological literacy contained in the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2001) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, 2009); and
• Research studies and reports (e.g., Technically Speaking and Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy from National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Research Council (NRC); The Intellectual and Policy Foundations of the 21st Century Skills Framework (P21, n.d.); Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge (NSF, 2008).

Tables illustrating how the major assessment areas presented in Chapter Two are aligned with these source documents are presented in Appendices C and D. These sources embody a wealth of information about technological literacy and technology education. All address similar issues of K-12 content and assessment, and in many ways they converge on a broad vision of technology and engineering literacy. However, the various documents do not always agree on definitions of terms, and in many cases they attach different meanings to phrases such as "educational technology" and "technology education," which a reader outside the field would find confusing. Consequently, it is important to establish clear definitions for the purpose of this framework and the work of NAEP that will follow. (See the glossary in Appendix A for full definitions of relevant terms used in this framework.)