Partnership Science and Technology Education

Ultimately, creating lasting and long-term change in the participation of women as developers, users, and beneficiaries of technology necessitates addressing this change in all of our social institutions. However, as the social institution that is given explicit responsibility for teaching the next generation of citizens, education holds particularly significant potential to be a positive force for change. We need a fundamental shift in the culture of science and IT away from its dominator roots to a partnership perspective, and we all (i.e., teachers, students, parents, businessowners, and citizens) need to co-create this change together. In Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century, Riane Eisler (2000) calls for changes in content (what we teach—our curriculum), process (how we teach—our teaching methods), and structure (where we teach—our learning environments). In Chapter VI, I explored the first issue—what is missing from the content of our knowledge tradition. In Chapter III, I explored the second issue—process barriers that some learners face in due to the gendered philosophy of science and the ways in which certain learning styles are privileged over others. This chapter adds to the discussion of all three issues, but focuses primarily on the second and third—partnership methods of teaching and learning and how to create partnership learning environments. This chapter explores the following suggestions for shifting education (especially science and IT education) away from a dominator and towards a partnership model: (1) partnership ways of knowing; (2) considering the needs and perspectives of users and beneficiaries of science and IT in education; (3) educating teachers from kindergarten through college to better understand how our current system works as well as how to co-create partnership; (4) redefining student-teacher relationships in terms of partnership; (5) co-creating collaborative learning environments; (6) developing partnerships systems of testing, evaluating, and measuring learning; and (7) offering examples of partnership curricula and programs. In Chapter I, I contrasted the characteristics of dominator and partnership social systems. Table 1 describes the characteristics of partnership social systems that are particularly relevant to science and technology education as they relate to the topics covered in this chapter (Eisler, 1987, 2000, 2002, 2007; Eisler & Loye, 1990; Eisler & Miller, 2004).