[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-600406-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":81,"doc-detail-600406-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":74,"head_meta":76,"extra_data":78,"updated_unix":80},105,"en","timeless-socially-relevant-engineering-knowledge-and-skills-for-future-education-research-study-overview","Timeless, socially relevant engineering knowledge and skills for future education - research study overview","","Engineering education aims to teach knowledge that remains useful throughout students’ lives, supporting further study, work, and responsible participation in a democratic society. The article examines how international curricula, standards, and Swedish educators address future-compliant versus timeless learning in technology and engineering. It also analyzes interview findings showing teachers more easily describe timeless skills—such as engineering design processes, technical problem solving, programming fundamentals, and engineering mechanics—than timeless factual knowledge.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/timeless-socially-relevant-engineering-knowledge-and-skills-for-future-education-research-study-overview/600406/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/timeless-socially-relevant-engineering-knowledge-and-skills-for-future-education-research-study-overview/600406.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"OmBimo","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-02","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",7,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"Why is it difficult to design technology and engineering education that stays useful in the future?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"Because technology evolves rapidly and educational systems often transfer present-day societal knowledge rather than preparing students for unknown future conditions. Predicting which programming languages, energy sources, and materials will matter decades ahead is unreliable.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"What does the study aim to investigate in introductory technology and engineering education?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It investigates how key players try to increase the likelihood that K–12 technology and engineering education remains relevant later in life, focusing on what timeless, society-relevant knowledge is and how educators and students describe their efforts.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"Which timeless skills are highlighted by teachers, teacher educators, and teacher students in the interviews?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The interviews emphasize abilities related to engineering design processes, technical problem-solving strategies, fundamentals of computer programming, and engineering mechanics.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},600406,1792208771,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,92,96,101,106,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":85,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":89,"show_sort_weight":90,"slug":91},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":97,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":102,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":103,"show_sort_weight":104,"slug":105},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":131},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":111,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":108},962090893581,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Timeless, socially relevant engineering knowledge and skills for future education  \nPer Norström, KTH Institute of Technology, Sweden Susanne Engström, KTH Institute of Technology, Sweden Birgit Fahrman, KTH Institute of Technology, Sweden  \nAbstract  \nWhat pupils learn in school should ideally be useful throughout their whole lives. It should help them in further studies, in working life, and when acting as responsible citizens in democratic society. This is challenging for all subjects, including technology. Technology develops fast. It is most likely that wheels, wedges, and inclined planes will be used in the future, but it is difficult to know which programming languages, sources of energy, and materials that will be relevant a few decades from now. This article describe how these problems are handled in international curricula and standards, and by Swedish teachers, teacher students, and teacher educators. In curricula they are seldom addressed explicitly, but handled by giving deliberately vague descriptions of what students are to learn. The interviewed teachers, teacher educators, and teacher students were unused to think about future-compliant or timeless knowledge. When prompted to do so during the interviews, they found it easier to describe timeless skills than timeless factual knowledge. Prominent among their suggestions were abilities related to engineering design processes, technical problem solving strategies, fundamentals of computer programming, and engineering mechanics.  \nKeywords  \nengineering education, future compliant knowledge, secondary school, technology education, timeless knowledge  \nIntroduction  \nWhat students learn in school should ideally be useful both right now and well into the future: it should be timeless or future-compliant. Students learn to enable them to study, help them in their everyday lives, prepare for professional careers, for being able to participate in a democratic society, and more. It is not obvious how an educational system should be designed to increase the likelihood of the studied subject content being valid when the students grow up. The passage of time in itself leads to an inherent transfer problem: Schools mainly teach students about today’s society to enable them to function in a society ten, twenty or thirty years in the future. Trying to teach students about the future is difficult, as predictions of the future concerning most aspects of society are notoriously unreliable (e.g., Inayatullah, 1990; World Economic Forum, 2023) .  \nSince the 1990s, content related to technology and engineering has been introduced in curricula all over the world. In some countries (e.g., Sweden, New Zealand, England) it has been in the form of separate subjects while other have integrated it in other subjects, often crafts or natural science (e.g., Finland, the Netherlands, parts of the United States) . Predicting future usefulness of technological knowledge is difficult. ITEA’s Standards for technological literacy (2007, p. 1) describe the situation thus:  \nBecause technology is so fluid, teachers of technology tend to spend less time on specific details and more on concepts and principles. The goal is to produce students with a more conceptual understanding of technology and its place in society, who can thus grasp and evaluate new bits of technology that they might never have seen before.  \nTechnology’s ‘fluidity’(ITEA’s expression) does lead to special challenges. To even identify the‘conceptual understanding’ that will withstand the test of time is difficult. Think of how the debates about nuclear power and wind power, the role of mobile telephones, and the use of artificial intelligence have changed during the last decades. Some changes have occurred quicker than expected (e.g., smartphones) while other have been surprisingly slow (we still wait for cold fusion and the autonomous vehicle revolution) . In Sweden, what pupils learn about technology in school at the age of 13 shou","cbCaiiXyiiB9hdxY","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiiXyiiB9hdxY","pdf",297691,16,"English","# Abstract\n# Keywords\n# Introduction\n# Aim and research questions\n# Background: Technology education in Swedish schools","[{\"question\":\"Why is it difficult to design technology and engineering education that stays useful in the future?\",\"answer\":\"Because technology evolves rapidly and educational systems often transfer present-day societal knowledge rather than preparing students for unknown future conditions. Predicting which programming languages, energy sources, and materials will matter decades ahead is unreliable.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the study aim to investigate in introductory technology and engineering education?\",\"answer\":\"It investigates how key players try to increase the likelihood that K–12 technology and engineering education remains relevant later in life, focusing on what timeless, society-relevant knowledge is and how educators and students describe their efforts.\"},{\"question\":\"Which timeless skills are highlighted by teachers, teacher educators, and teacher students in the interviews?\",\"answer\":\"The interviews emphasize abilities related to engineering design processes, technical problem-solving strategies, fundamentals of computer programming, and engineering mechanics.\"}]","Timeless, socially relevant engineering knowledge and skills for future education - research study overview | PDF",1792090631]