CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Education
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches to Developing Technology Awareness, Competence, and Skills across Academic DisciplinesView all articles
Teaching Technology Awareness: Capabilities and Thresholds to Think About Technology
Provisionally accepted
- Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
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Technological advances are blurring the boundaries between technical and non-technical disciplines. This shift compels educators to develop teaching methods that equip students with the capabilities necessary to be aware of technological impact and investigate the meaning of technologies throughout their careers. Here, we address the challenge of teaching technology awareness in nontechnical disciplines. We do so by presenting an account of the development of the course Technology and Society at Oslo Metropolitan University. Alongside providing insights into the curriculum design and evolution of this course, we offer a theoretical contribution. Specifically, we highlight the benefits of a capabilities-oriented curriculum design and the use of threshold concepts as tools to enhance students' technological awareness, understood as the ability to interpret the meaning of technology within their future professions. We conclude by presenting an example from teaching that demonstrates how technology can challenge the meaning of professional practice. In doing so, we show how professional practice, in turn, influence the meaning of technology, fostering a deeper understanding of its role and impact.
Keywords: technology awareness, capability, threshold, Pedagogics, Critical Thinking
Received: 25 Jun 2025; Accepted: 29 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sneltvedt, Geirbo and Krigsvoll Haagensen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ole Sneltvedt
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