Practices

Practices contribute to the framework by articulating the general kinds of thinking and reasoning that students are expected to demonstrate when responding to assessment tasks and items. The framework specifies three generic kinds of practices that apply across the three assessment areas: (1) understanding technological principles; (2) developing solutions and achieving goals; and (3) communicating and collaborating.

Building on the pyramid of major assessment areas introduced in Chapter Two, the practices are distributed around a circle in which the pyramid sits. As critical components of technological literacy, these cross-cutting practices are applied across all three major assessment areas. For example, communicating effectively and collaborating with others are necessary skills for understanding the effects of technology on the natural world, designing an engineering solution to a technological problem, and achieving a goal using information and communication technologies.

The Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress served as the primary source for these practices. Developers of the science framework had examined the sections on Science and Technology and the Designed World from the National Science Education Standards as well as Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy and cognitive research on science learning. Learning research has shown that these three kinds of cognitive processes represent how all individuals build their content knowledge and understanding in a subject area and how they develop strategies for using their knowledge in their thinking, reasoning, and application to new situations. To create the practices for the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework, the cross-cutting practices from the Science Framework for the 2009 NAEP were modified so that they applied to processes relevant to technological literacy, primarily by indicating that technology and engineering literacy depends on having and using knowledge about technologies to reason, develop solutions, communicate and collaborate. In addition, the national, international, and state technology and engineering literacy frameworks cited in Chapter Two were used as reference points.

Although the practices are related and not independent of each other, classifying the assessment targets in Chapter Two according to the three cross-cutting practices will help developers produce a range of rich and challenging assessment tasks and items. A brief description of each of these three practices is offered below.

Understanding Technological Principles focuses on students' knowledge and understanding of technology and their capability to think and reason with that knowledge. This practice ranges from the knowledge of simple declarative facts and concepts to higher-level reasoning about facts, concepts, and principles and their interrelationships. Students should be able to call upon their recognition and understanding of technological principles to explain features and functions of technologies and systems, how components fit together, and to make predictions, comparisons, and evaluations. The assessment targets that elicit this practice require students to identify examples, explain, describe, analyze, compare, relate, and represent the technological principles specified in Chapter Two. This practice also includes understanding the relationships among components of systems and interactive processes.

Developing Solutions and Achieving Goals refers to students' systematic application of technological knowledge, tools, and skills to address problems and achieve goals presented in societal, design, curriculum, and realistic contexts. This practice includes both procedural and strategic capabilities—knowing how to apply simple steps and use technological tools to address authentic tasks, as well as when and where to apply the tools and design and problem solving strategies. This practice draws upon the previous practice—to understand technological principles—and adds the dimension of applying this knowledge to solve problems and achieve goals. This practice involves using fundamental problem solving processes such as planning, monitoring, evaluating, and revising, and how these generic problem solving strategies can be employed in the three assessment areas. It may engage students in analyzing goals, planning, designing, and implementing as well as in iteratively revising and evaluating possible solutions to meet the requirements of a problem or to achieve a goal. For the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Assessment, a distinguishing feature of this practice is that the students respond to questions and tasks during the process of solving a multi-stage problem or working through how best to achieve a goal, using their understanding of technological principles to do so.

Communicating and Collaborating centers on students' capabilities to use contemporary technologies to communicate for a variety of purposes and in a variety of ways, working individually or in teams. In the three major assessment areas, in order to address societal issues, solve problems, achieve goals, and design processes and products, students must develop representations and share ideas, designs, data, explanations, models, arguments, and presentations. Effective teamwork and collaboration with peers and experts who are either present or in another location are important skills that can help students achieve their goals. In the assessment, collaboration tasks will engage individual students with virtual (computer-generated) peers and experts. Communication and collaboration are critical, cross-cutting practices in all subject domains. For technology and engineering literacy, these practices are distinguished by students' facility with a range of technologies to communicate and collaborate.

Table 3.1 presents generic examples of how these three practices can be used to classify targets in the three major assessment areas. These are sample ideas for items and tasks and will not be used in the actual assessment. It should again be noted that the boundaries between the practices are not entirely distinct, but referring to these three practices can be helpful in the development of tasks and items and the interpretation of student performance for a range of cognitive demands.