Although 'models' play a significant role in engineering activities, not much has yet been developed to enhance the technological literacy of students in this regard. This contribution intends to help fill this gap and deliver a comprehensive account as to the nature and various properties of these engineering tools. It begins by inspecting two wellknown cases: the long-term policy documents of technological literacy in the USA and in New Zealand. This will help to clarify the approach of these educational documents to models, provide a primary understanding of their existing drawbacks in this relation, and realize the necessity of underpinning a well-organized account that can be used in teaching about models. Next, the discussion moves toward an attempt to develop a sound description of the nature of models. This is accomplished through an extensive review of the viewpoints of philosophers (of science and technology) about the nature and properties of these tools; models will then be argued and suggested for consideration as technoscientific artefacts with their own dual nature: the intrinsic and the intentional. Such an account paves the way to the next step, which namely attempts to provide a well-ordered framework of the models' various properties, through taking up those two natures and their interrelation in detail. The paper concludes by showing some initial advantages of applying the suggested approach to the intended cases, which can hopefully lead to further, more detailed inspections and extended contributions.
Since current water governance patterns mandate cooperation and partnership within and between the actors in the hydrosystems, supplementary models are necessary to distinguish the roles and the rules of indoor actions which is why we extend a theory in the frameworks of philosophy of technology. This analysis is empirically grounded on the problematic hydrosystems of a river in central Iran, Zayandehrud. Following a modernist-holistic-based analysis, it illustrates how values in the water apportionment mechanisms are being reshaped. The article by using the theory of normative practice has scrutinised the tasks and the rules of the old and new water-management systems, Mirab. Subsequently according to such philosophical theory, it has argued that the conflicts over the cases are due to interference of structural and directional norms within them.
The technological literacy of students has recently become one of the primary goals of education in countries such as the USA, England, New Zealand, Australia, and so forth. However the question here is whether these educations-their long-term policy documents as well as the standards they provide in particular-address sufficient learning about the nature of technology. This seems to be an important concern that through taking advantage of the philosophy of technology (the arena which affords a bountiful ground of various reflections on the nature of technology) is intended to be discussed throughout this study. In the first place, the paper presents a relevant framework based upon Mitcham's (1994) four-aspect account of technology, i.e., technology as objects, knowledge, activities, and volition. Then it categorizes the main relevant concepts and concerns put forward by many other philosophers of technology into this framework; this will yield a concrete model (tool) to analyze any intended standard such as the above mentioned ones. Afterwards, to show how this model works, the well-known case of the USA-Standards for Technological Literacy (ITEA, 2007)-will be used as an example for inspection; the results will disclose the points where the current American case needs to be modified.
Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations in real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice.
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