Standards for Technological Literacy and STEM Education Delivery Through Career and Technical Education Programs

The domestic and international marketplaces are changing, developing new technology and processes to improve productivity in every sector, requiring people to have different skills and attitudes about work. Arguably, technology and the new literacies associated with it have transformed the workplace more quickly and more deeply than any of our other institutions (Mikulecky & Kirkley, 1998). With these improvements, some segments within the workforce have experienced technical obsolescence. Today’s knowledge-based society that thrives on technological transformation has little room for those who cannot read, write, and compute proficiently; find and use resources; frame and solve problems; and continually learn new technologies and skills, as well as work in technical occupations (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). According to the U.S. Department of Labor, technical occupations require knowledge of scientific, engineering, and mathematical theories, principles, and techniques that enable individuals to understand how and why a specific device or system operates (United States Department of Labor, n.d). Democratic governance in knowledge-based societies like the United States relies on the ability of the general populace to make informed choices about the options made available to them by responsible scientific and technological progress (Busquin, 2002). In such societies, it is commonplace to say that relationships between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are becoming increasingly stronger, permeating the workplace and creating new literacy demands for solving daily work-related problems.