From Industrial Arts to Technology Education: The Search for Direction

Editor's Note: This is the second of three articles that examines the historical relationship between industrial arts and technology education. The first appeared in this journal's Winter/Spring 1996 issue. It examined the curricular underpinnings of industrial arts in the 1930s and the historical and conceptual relationship to technology education. This article focuses on the subsequent development of industrial arts from the 1940s through the end of the 1970s. This was a period when the profession attempted to refocus industrial arts in response to major national curriculum changes. A third article that examines the transition to technology education in the 1980s and the challenge that the field faces in defining technology education in terms that relate to the present educational climate is scheduled for a sub-sequent issue of this journal.