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Many vocational education, technology education, and now technology and engineering education leaders have made their mark on our profession. Their legacy is something that members of the profession enjoy and have a responsibility to continue and build upon.
This is the tenth in a series of articles entitled "The Legacy Project." The Legacy Project focuses on the lives and actions of leaders who have forged our profession into what it is today. Members of the profession owe a debt of gratitude to these leaders. One simple way to demonstrate that gratitude is to recognize these leaders and some of their accomplishments. The focus and scope of this Legacy article are Jack Wescott and Don Smith from Ball State University.
Ball State University has had a national reputation for producing industrial arts and later technology education teachers for decades. The department was equally noted for producing strong teachers, administrators, and teacher educators. What ideas were working to produce these educators? Describe the characteristics of the type of educator that you desired to prepare through your undergraduate program.
The characteristics of the educator that the undergraduate program desired to prepare were derived from the following questions: (1) What are the essential qualities of a good technology education teacher? and (2) How can we assist the individual to become a good technology teacher? Although not intended to be all-inclusive, the following is a short list of characteristics that were desirable for the undergraduate program.
Technical skills. Possessing a technical skill set has always been a major focus of the undergraduate program, since the learning experience has always been activity/laboratory-based. For several decades prior to the early 1980s, students developed technical skills by taking coursework in unit shops such as woodworking, metals, plastics, electricity, and drafting. This was appropriate, since most of the graduates would be hired into public school programs offering courses in these areas that were taught in facilities similar to those they experienced at the collegiate level. As the profession began the transition to a technology emphasis, technical courses were implemented, with the emphasis placed on the areas of technology that included manufacturing, construction, communication, and transportation. The unique characteristic of this revision was that teacher education faculty taught the technical courses.
The act of teaching....