Technological changes have been a central feature of development strategies for the last three decades. They are becoming more rather than less important in defining the circumstances under which development will take place over the next decade. Technological change impinges on policy on educational assistance in many ways.
The capacity of scientific and technological advances to transform the physical environment and contribute to economic development is self evident. It is through technology that much of the investment that has taken place in human resource development has been transformed from ideas and possibilities to address the real world of needs to increase food production, improve access to clean water, generate power for industrial production, and provide infrastructure to market goods and services internally and for export. Advances in health care, communications technology, and transport systems have brought even the most remote areas into contact with the outside world and have provided access to the benefits of modern inventions.
At the same time these changes have brought with them some disadvantages and have contributed to the stresses associated with rapid change in any society. They have made possible urbanisation on an unprecedented scale and have transformed the nature of production, increased productivity and have reduced the needs for low cost labour for many types of industrial production and in commercial agriculture. They may have undermined culture and community in societies unprepared and vulnerable to rapid change. They may have contributed to the "cultural imperialism" that some observers associate with the marketing of consumer goods which purport to sell an (unavailable) lifestyle along with a product and with international television programming which projects images of affluence and conspicuous consumption into the remotest corners of the globe.
National science and technology policy, and its articulation with educational policy and educational assistance, take on a new significance against this background. Oversimplifying considerably there have been two distinctly different views of the role of science and technology in development. First there are those who see development as essentially a problem of technology transfer from industrialized countries to those with little scientific capability. This assumes developing countries can transform their economies by utilising science and technology developed elsewhere and follow broadly similar development trajectories. The key to this process is argued to be to ensure that technology is transferred, not merely transplanted and that it is adapted to suit local conditions. Problems to be overcome include the ownership of intellectual property rights, the commercial value of production technology, the different mix of factors of production in different environments, and the scarcity of qualified scientists and engineers. With goodwill and some measure of disinterest on the part of the owners of technology, technological dependence can then be replaced by technological cooperation that vests some measure of control with organisations in the host country. This may be easier to achieve with obsolescent technologies and may be increasingly difficult the closer the technology is to that of leading exponents who would suffer competitive disadvantages by making the technology available to others.
An alternative perspective is to stress the qualitative differences in the development problems of the poorer countries and argue for the development of indigenous and appropriate science and technology that cannot come about simply through technology transfer no matter how efficient. Proponents of this view note that the research and development which is concentrated in developed countries is often simply irrelevant to the needs of rural populations where even the simplest technology cannot be maintained and capital is much scarcer than labour. They point to the tardiness and underfunding of research on tropical agriculture and diseases as an example of how the development priorities of rich countries have shaped the impact of science and technology on developing countries. Much of the agricultural research that has been applied they argue, is directed towards improving the production of cash crops for export, not meeting the basic needs of the local population. And medical research has focused on the diseases of the rich rather than those of the poor. From this perspective the need is for those who can create and radically adapt scientific and technological knowledge for domestic application, not simply transfer it. They can then contribute to scientific and technological development domestically and internationally. Technological dependency can then be replaced by a judicious mix of appropriate and indigenously developed science and technology which is grounded directly in the needs of the populations it serves.
The world is never as simple as the common habit of constructing dichotomies suggests. Both views contain elements of truth and paint incomplete pictures. This is partly because the problems of development have both local and international dimensions and because science is in a sense universal (it seeks knowledge which is not bound by specific cultural contexts) but the utility of its application (technology) is specific to context. National science and technology strategies based on these different views demand an understanding of the room to manoeuvre that national economies have. Small countries with limited access to markets cannot hope to sustain a wide base of technological industries. Even medium and large size countries are unlikely to have the resources to compete globally in most fields. The only strategy that is really viable is to identify affordable technologies where there is a comparative advantage. The corollary of this is to emphasise the scientific and technological needs of the population as a whole, and make special provision to support science and technology in carefully selected areas. For a good proportion of developing countries it will remain much cheaper to buy specialised training abroad than develop local facilities for which the demand will be limited and the costs high. The problem of ensuring that expensively trained staff do contribute the fruits of their training to the national economy that sponsors them, and do not simply brain drain themselves away, remains. But it is an illusion to believe that training in national institutions prevents this.
Policy on science and technology has to address competing priorities. These may include an orientation to initiatives which contribute to national economic growth based on capturing part of global markets for products with a significant science and technology component; lessening dependence on imported technology and meeting domestic ambitions to become more self sufficient, improving the employment prospects of the workforce through increasing knowledge and skill levels; enhancing the quality of life of the mass of the people through better understanding of their environment and how to make best use of it employing scientific understanding. Which of these is emphasised clearly has implications for the nature of science and technology education that can contribute to such policy objectives.
Thus appropriate assistance should reflect judgements of the nature of demand for scientific and technological skills. The kind of education and training that encourages the creative development of new products and develops them to a marketable form may not be the same as that which enables a systematic approach to be adopted to developing process innovations, or to maintaining equipment developed elsewhere. Academic science which emphasises the fundamental and is laboratory based may not encourage the development of the technological skills of solving problems in the real world that depend primarily on the identification and application of existing technologies. And similarly the appropriate mix of graduate level to technician and craftsmen who need scientific and technological understanding will depend in some measure on the structure of the local economy and the development strategy being pursued.
What the impact of changes in technology in the future will be is difficult to judge. New agricultural technologies may change the pattern of rural livelihoods. Increased urbanisation suggests that it is familiarity with urban applications of science and technology that is becoming more important for many citizens whose lives are increasingly divorced from rural areas. Scientifically based products and services are widely dispersed yet knowledge of their way they work is concentrated amongst a minority. This has many implications. Safe practices in the domestic use of electricity are widely disregarded through ignorance, many machines representing substantial capital investment cannot be repaired or are repaired in ways which provokes subsequent breakdown, corrosive and poisonous chemicals are released into the environment through ignorance as well as intention. Thus their exist growing needs for both specialised assistance to increase the pool of technically and scientifically competent personnel and for the extension of scientific literacy to a greater proportion of populations which depend on the benefits that they can deliver.
Carnoy (1992) has analysed the contribution that scientific and technological training can make to development in a series case studies which draw on Asian experience. He identifies four areas in which contributions may be critical. The first of these concerns changes in the world economic order which mean that more than ever before growth is dependent on knowledge and information which has a scientific character. Production in advanced countries, and those developing countries growing most rapidly is becoming increasingly related to the information processing technologies. Flexible, post-Fordist manufacturing strategies require technical competence and responsive innovation at the production unit level and intensify the sophisticated human resource inputs needed. It appears to be the case that those countries that have invested effectively in utilising information based technologies, and have the educational base to provide human resources to apply them, have reaped economic benefits as the high and sustained growth rates of the Asian Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) suggest.
In most NICs the state has been developmentalist and has supported strategic planning and invested heavily in "catching up" technologies. This is the second area and is characterised by labour discipline, mass educational access, and special emphasis on science and technology in education and training and in public policy on development. The third and fourth areas identify the consolidation of institutional frameworks for research and training and the special role that higher education may play.
There may be lessons from the experience of Asian NICs for other countries, though, for the reasons identified above, some caution is needed in translating policy conclusions across economies and cultures. Castell's argument that acquiring new technology will only be effective if there is in the country a process of endogenous technological development that can receive, support and use the know how being transferred is convincing and lends support to the view that assistance to this end is a priority in those countries with the infrastructural conditions that make this a feasible objective. In conclusion there are four dimensions we can draw from a discussion of issues arising from scientific and technological change.
First, basic scientific and technological literacy is a prerequisite for adapting to changes in production technologies and consumption patterns that are affecting the populations of all countries. IEA and other data (see below) suggests that science is not taught effectively to large proportions of the school populations of many countries, and suggest that the needs of the majority, who usually follow non-specialised curricula offerings, are probably the most neglected.
Second, aspects of information technology, and other more traditional technologies, have an important place in science education. This has to be understood not in terms of naive introductions of, say, computer studies into schools where the costs are high and the educational benefits not clearly thought out. Rather it invites more systematic review of how awareness and skills with new and old technologies can most fruitfully be introduced to balance the virtues of the academic rigour of more traditional science courses.
Third, assistance in the development of national science policies is important where these do not exist. A clear view or purposes is a necessary condition for the translation of human resource development goals into science and technology education policy.
Fourth, specialised forms of science and technology education and training are at the core of the production of competent elites who can both act to negotiate effectively for the transfer of available and relevant technologies, and who can create a critical mass of scientific and technological capability which is endogenously based. The costs of developing this, and the appropriate role of external assistance in the process, bear close examination.
