Chapter 7 examined food specialisations. This chapter continues to examine the contexts of technologies by looking at engineering principles and systems, and materials and technologies specialisations. Engineering as a context for the study of technologies is an area for primary and early childhood teachers to consider when planning for children’s learning. This area opens up new possibilities, particularly for girls (Figure 8.1). As a profession in Australia, engineering is male dominated. Engineers Australia (2022, p. 17) found that

The terms ‘technology’ and ‘technological literacy’ are heard in many different forums (e.g. Seery et al., 2018). Newspapers often feature articles relating to technology and many politicians associate economic success with technological products and capabilities. Yet what do we really mean when we talk about technology, and what constitutes knowledge in technology education? This book brings together research on technologies education. You are invited to reflect critically upon this research by recording your reactions to the examples of teaching practices, children’s comments and work samples, as well as the research, presented in each chapter.

Chapters 5 and 6 examined the subject Digital Technologies in detail. In this chapter and those that follow, the contexts of technologies will be studied: food and fibre production and food specialisations (this chapter); and engineering principles; and systems and materials and technologies specialisations (Chapters 8 and 9). This chapter will look specifically at food and fibre production and food specialisations (Figures 7.1–7.3). In the process of studying fibre production, the fashion industry will be explored.

Chapter 1 examined technology, exploring a range of perspectives. The chapter also introduced an overview of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies and the Early Years Learning Framework. This chapter discusses what is unique about the nature of technologies education and unpacks some of the key ideas found in the Australian Curriculum: Technologies. Examples of creating preferred futures, and engaging with project management, systems thinking, design thinking and computational thinking, are all considered unique to technologies education (Hallström and Klasander, 2019). This chapter focuses specifically on the most obvious of these ideas: generating designs (see Figure 2.1). Through a series of case studies, it explores the various features of a design brief and the design process in action (Figure 2.2).

The previous chapters examined the idea of a design brief and creating preferred futures. Design thinking that is supportive of the Design and Technologies subject was explored, and through a series of case studies children from birth to 12 years were shown engaging in design thinking to generate and produce solutions to problems they were interested in solving.

Our discussion to this point has focused entirely on perfectly competitive markets, or scenarios in which the economy is populated by large numbers of producers and consumers who individually have no ability to influence market prices. However, in reality, we may sometimes encounter cases of imperfect competition, whereby the number of producers is so small that individual producers do indeed wield some sort of pricing power.