JITE v40n4 - A Catalyst for Excellence: A Report on the Transformation of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators

A Catalyst for Excellence: A Report on the Transformation of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators

Stephen Petrina
University of British Columbia

Paul Brauchle
Illinois State University

James Gregson
University of Idaho

Dennis Herschbach
University of Maryland

Marie Hoepfl
Appalachian State University

Scott Johnson
University of Illinois

Sam Stern
Oregon State University

Thomas Walker
Temple University

Karen Zuga
The Ohio State University

Signifying a shift in the education landscape, the venerable America Vocational Association (AVA), established in 1926, changed its name to the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) in 2000. Mantra-like, "the new vocationalism" was coined in the early 1990s to capture the spirit of a transformation underfoot. By the turn of the century, the phrase referred to any number of changes across the educational system in European and North American countries and in southern hemisphere countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Many rejected the new qualifier of vocationalism, yet only the most dogmatic of critics denied that the traditional dichotomy between academic and vocational education was under siege ( Lewis, 1998 ).

Scholars whose conventional purview rarely reached beyond general education have recently been inspired to rethink the nature of schooling, adult education, and education in general. Save for a few reluctant practitioners, most educators in the business of preparing teachers and trainers have had to accommodate recent remixes of academic and vocational education. As the name change of the AVA to ACTE suggested, the notion of vocational education and its industrial era baggage fell out of vogue. Career and technical education were considered more appropriate for a postindustrial era. Industrial education referred to industrialism as well; and, in most discourses, technology education was a forward-looking replacement. However, with technology education's connotation of computer-based work and leanings away from anything that smacked of vocationalism, technical education continued to be used in popular parlance without critical reflection. Almost suddenly, a convergence of communication and information technologies accompanied by a heightened public sense of economic competition and conditions has made the preparation for technology and work a respectable, if not contested, practice.

The proliferation of communication and information technologies in factories, offices, and other workplaces has raised a number of questions regarding the economic value of specific knowledge and skills. For example, for nearly a century, drafters were secure with their refined skills of drawing, annotating, and embellishing the work of designers and engineers. With the advent of computer-aided design (CAD), however, drafters, designers, and engineers witnessed their job requirements changing, mostly to the detriment of the drafters. CAD operators were seen as the logical evolution from drafters, but the demands for these operators never rose to the predictions of economists during the late 1980s and 1990s. Many designers and engineers today are necessarily in the business of drafting, as this is a few automated keystrokes away from much of their work of analysis and design.

This type of innovation and the increasing globalization of capital, goods, labor, and services have made it extremely difficult to predict knowledge and skill requirements. In the paid labor market of North America over the past 20 years, a growing percentage of workers have had to accept part-time employment for a lack of availability of full-time jobs. The largest volume of part-time jobs has been in the retail, service, and trade sectors of the economy. These jobs, occupied by a large number of women and minorities, provide little security and low wages, and have required relatively basic social and technical skills. After publishing The End of Work (1996) , Rifkin has continued to argue that through automation, much of the type of paid work that provided a living for previous generations is disappearing.

Nonetheless, these shifting educational and occupational landscapes have left career and technical educators in colleges and universities with ambivalence. On one hand, these educators celebrated their newfound status, attention to technical skills, and remix of academic and vocational studies. Yet as their status improved and recognition came their way, they witnessed an alarming reduction in their numbers through attrition and through the elimination of their long-standing departments in colleges of education. It seemed as though they had taken one step forward and two steps back. For example, once indispensable to the professional health of career and technical teacher education, departments of industrial, technological, and occupational education at the University of Maryland and the University of Missouri were dissolved in 1993 and 1999, respectively. The elimination of these and other large departments and a general decline of enrollments in career and technical teacher education left the entire profession vulnerable to forces that in other times could be accommodated.

The 1980s saw the rise of departments of industrial technology, and by the 1990s it was apparent that the relationships between industrial education and industrial technology were not necessarily complementary. Today, many college and university educators associate themselves with industrial technology before industrial education. As indicated in a later section, the National Association of Industrial Technology's (NAIT) college and university faculty membership base is nearly four times that of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators (NAITTE), reflecting a trend of growth since NAIT's genesis in 1967.

Adding to the problem of enrollments in career and technical teacher education has been a reemphasis on academic skills and literacies in public and private K-12 education. Since the early 1980s, the American educational system has undergone a restructuring that tended to diminish the role of vocational education. Large urban districts such as New York City eliminated large portions of their vocational programs. Most private school models, popular in these now trendy school choice times, do not offer any form of career and technical education. Career and technical education for many has come to be seen as a practice commensurate with the mission of middle and junior colleges. The attenuation of the profession of career and technical teacher educators has left its practitioners with the task of doing more with less. While this could be seen as a challenge, in an already budget-constrained context of postsecondary education, doing more with less more often than not means doing more with stress ( U.S. Office of Education, 1998 ).

Highly sensitive to these changes, little is certain for NAITTE in this era of anxiety, exhilaration, and despondency. Both the youngest and most senior of NAITTE members recognize the signs and necessity for organizational change; and the will for radical, systemic transformation is apparent. NAITTE members have been preoccupied with adjusting to and anticipating academic and economic shifts, and it has been difficult to harness the collective NAITTE energy toward organizational well-being.

Recognizing the overextension of the membership, NAITTE Executive Committees over the past decade have maintained a customary range of NAITTE services while moving questions of systemic change into the future. Currently, it appears that neither the membership nor the Executive Committee is satisfied with the image and status of NAITTE or the range of services it provides. In some ways, the decline in the number of NAITTE members over the past two decades speaks more to the currency of NAITTE than to the general reduction of the number of career and technical teacher educators in Canada and the United States ( U.S. Office of Education, 1998 ). Indeed, NAITTE has been primed for systemic change; current academic and economic forces merely make this point all the more salient. The transformation of NAITTE will require hard maneuvering that is at the same time academic, demographic, economic, ideological, intellectual, and political. With the risk of overstating this transformation, NAITTE may in fact be unrecognizable as a distinct entity in 2006.

NAITTE Is Dying; NAITTE Is Dead; Long Live NAITTE

"If you don't feel the panic about the future of NAITTE," Evans reasoned in 1993 , "you don't understand the situation" (p. 30). Evans was responding to Miller (1993) and the National Opinion Research Center's survey of the NAITTE membership's satisfaction with their organization and its services. For Evans, the Miller study did not capture the existing crisis of finance and identity that NAITTE was facing. Others, such as Walker (1993) , echoed Evans' assessment, and found a dissonance between the gradual (two decades) decline of NAITTE membership, an inadequate financial base to sustain the organization, and the relative contentment of members reported by Miller. Evans and Walker concurred that, somehow, Miller had asked the wrong questions. "I can't help but wonder" Walker concluded, "whether (the Miller study) got at what ails NAITTE" (p. 26). Those with an intimate knowledge of the workings of NAITTE saw a crisis where Miller found "contentment with the status quo" (p. 25).

At the same time that Evans and Walker were casting doubts on the efficacy of the Miller report, NAITTE President Mann sounded an alarm to his membership. "NAITTE is dying!" Mann proclaimed ( 1993 ). Three factors, membership, funding, and apathy, led him to his "pessimistic diagnosis." "Yes, folks," Mann repeated, "NAITTE is critically ill and unless there are some significant changes, it will surely die" (p. 1). Peaking at 702 members in 1973, the NAITTE membership had declined to 207 dues-paying members in December 1992. The decline in the number of members naturally led to a reduction in the financial base of NAITTE, and the organization was struggling to stay solvent in 1993. Only by depleting its reserves was NAITTE able to support its scholarly Journal of Industrial Teacher Education (JITE) and other services. A general apathy pervaded the organization, and Mann saw little evidence that the membership understood the severity of the problems NAITTE faced. If NAITTE members were uninformed prior to their president's alarm, they could not claim neglect for lack of communication afterwards.

Evans (1993) picked up on Mann's theme and made several recommendations for addressing NAITTE's ailments. Responding to a few threads of discontent expressed by members, he recommended reviewing the name of the association, the range of topics dealt with in the JITE, and the association's mission and goals. Arguing for "immediate action" (p. 33), he also made the following specific recommendations for short-term action.

• Reduction of the JITE from four to three issues to reduce costs
• Assessment of JITE authors for publication costs
• Economization of small matters (e.g., annual conference breakfast reservations, travel, and citations)
• Increase of institutional memberships

Long-term recommendations included the following.

• Industrial sponsorship of the JITE and scholarships
• Reorientation of the content of the JITE toward teacher education
• Joint activity between NAITTE and the Council for Technology Teacher Education

A series of adjustments to NAITTE practices were made in response to the crisis of 1993; and through the 1990s, NAITTE was stabilized. Under the direction of Mann and his successor Walker, NAITTE's financial and membership bases were stabilized. In hindsight, it is clear that adjustments in practices could have been made prior to 1993. However, with the perspective of time, we can see that NAITTE was not shaped to anticipate the academic and economic changes occurring during the late 1980s and 1990s. NAITTE has in fact been in a reaction mode for the past two decades. Today, it seems clear that this cycle of adjustments and reactions has taken its toll on even the most secure NAITTE traditions. For example, NAITTE's position in industrial teacher education has been eroded, and the organization's largest and most reliable source of members is in jeopardy. The transformation of NAITTE is no longer the challenge of attracting members, but rather a systemic alteration of the entire culture of NAITTE. If nothing else, the crisis of 1993 made evident the importance of asking the right questions and identifying the most significant problems to be solved.

The conversation of transforming NAITTE continued through the 1990s; and at the end of the decade, Martin (1999) was invited to the annual meeting to deliver an assessment of NAITTE's current condition. In the spirit of challenge, Martin took NAITTE's leaders to task on a number of points. On the issue of NAITTE's eroded membership base, Martin argued that the decline was not merely a factor of the larger decline of career and technical teacher educators. Rather, said Martin, NAITTE has little to offer "young professionals in the field" who are going elsewhere for their professional memberships (p. 3). He asked, "What opportunities does NAITTE provide its customers that they cannot get from membership in some other organization? Is there a competitive edge in the opportunities NAITTE provides its customers? Are the products of NAITTE tangible or intangible?" (pp. 4-5). Continuing, he noted that NAITTE exists to "serve as an authority and advocate in the preparation of professionals in the fields of industrial and technical teacher education and industrial and military training" (p. 5). And again, he raised a number of questions: "By whose standards is NAITTE the recognized authority and advocate? Is the size of NAITTE's membership a key indicator of its authority and strength of its advocacy? Why have policy makers not been in the habit of calling on NAITTE? He ended the address with a single poignant question directed toward the heart of NAITTE "Why does NAITTE exist as a professional organization?" (pp. 5-6). Martin's advice was to deliberate this question in all of its seriousness; through the contemplation of NAITTE's reason(s) for existence will come direction and structure. Echoing Evans', Mann's and Walker's assessments in 1993, NAITTE has to either "seize the moment or risk marginalization," or "even death" (p. 3).

The Organization and Membership Matrix

Issues of increasing, decreasing, or maintaining membership bases have plagued NAITTE since its inception in 1937. While these have been perennial problems, the issue of membership has become more complex with the diminishing number of career and technical educators. Organizations similar to NAITTE, and with similar problems, are now competing for a smaller pool of potential members. For the most part, these organizations offer services that are quite similar to NAITTE. As mentioned, even the most loyal members are in the predicament of making choices regarding the number of organizations they can feasibly join and support. Most of these members feel that they ought to get services that support their work and feel obligated to participate in their organization in some way. Short on time and resources, many members and potential members simply withdraw from organization activities. Professionals who once supported a multiple number of organizations can now ill afford to spread scarce resources and time across these organizations. Hence, they are choosing one or two as opposed to three or four professional organizations.

Making this more complex are the professional honorary societies such as Epsilon Pi Tau, Iota Lambda Sigma, and Omicron Tau Theta. These societies draw from the same pool of professionals as the organizations, demand similar commitments of resources and time, and offer similar services. Competition and a dwindling pool of authors has forced editors of the Journal of Career and Technical Education , the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , the Journal of Technology Education , the Journal of Technology Studies , and the Journal of Vocational Education Research to resort to creative means to sustain their journals.

Relatively small specialized organizations such as NAITTE are now forced to rethink their terms of existence and competition. The following tables are provided as a snapshot of the organizations most similar to NAITTE and with whom NAITTE competes. Table 1 provides the 1995 and 2001 NAITTE membership bases for comparison. Table 2 provides membership and select demographic data for NAITTE, the Council on Technology Teacher Education (CTTE), the American Vocational Education Research Association (AVERA), the National Association of Industrial Technology (NAIT), the American Technical Education Association (ATEA), the Academy for Human Resource Development (AHRD), and the International Technology Education Association (ITEA).

Table 1
NAITTE Membership by Classifications

Classification	1995 Total	2001 Total
Industrial/military training	22	18
Technical education	46	39
Technology education	118	92
Trade and industrial education	58	69
Other (HRD, publisher, etc.)	41	59
Total	285	277

Table 2
Association Membership by Position

NAITTE (February 2000)
Administrator (college/university)	19
Administrator (school)	18
Industrial trainer	2
Military trainer	10
Researcher	12
Student	31
Teacher educator	141
Other/undesignated	44
Total	277

CTTE (July 2001)
Administrator/supervisor	44
Elementary teacher	2
High school teacher	44
Middle school teacher	26
College/university faculty	217
Student	12
Retired/life inactive	125
Other/undesignated	37
Total	507

NAIT (July 2001)
Industrial technologist	580
Student	610
College/university faculty	460
T and I counselors	150
Retired/life inactive	125
Other/undesignated	37
Total	1,962

ATEA (July 2001)
College administrator	280
Industrial technologist	25
Student	15
College/university faculty	425
Total	745

AHRD (July 2001)
Industrial manager or trainer	245
Student	188
College/university faculty	377
Total	810

AVERA (July 2001)
College/university faculty	130
Student	24
Emeritus	12
Total	166

ITEA (February 2000)
Elementary teacher	206
Middle/junior high teacher	1,480
Secondary teacher	2,414
Supervisors/administrator	803
College/university faculty	633
Total	5,536

Since 1937, NAITTE has been dependent on industrial, technical, and technology teacher education for a large portion of its membership base. NAITTE was positioned for 13 years as the only organization that specialized in services for industrial and technical teacher education. In 1950, however, the American Council on Industrial Arts Teacher Education (ACIATE) (now CTTE) was established, reflecting the political differences between teacher educators who aligned with general education and those aligned with vocational education. The ACIATE was aligned with the American Industrial Arts Association, currently the International Technology Education Association (ITEA), founded in 1939, while NAITTE (then NAITT) was aligned with AVA. The split between ACIATE and NAITT made little sense at the time, and the split between CTTE and NAITTE makes little sense today. In 1961 a merger was suggested, and Evans suggested the same in 1988. Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, many NAITTE members maintained a membership in ACIATE/CTTE. Today, only 53 professionals maintain memberships in both organizations. While NAITTE does not compete with the ITEA directly, in an era of scarce resources and time, most CTTE members maintain their ITEA membership and have little incentive to join ACTE or NAITTE. Of the 2,163 individuals listed in the Industrial Teacher Education Directory ( Bell, 2000 ), only about 36% maintain a NAITTE or a CTTE membership.

There appears to be a potential pool of unaffiliated professionals, but a large percentage of these probably maintain an alignment with ATEA and NAIT. As Evans (1988) argued, NAITTE leaders misread the signs of the times in the academic landscape. They did not position NAITTE to capitalize on the huge growth in programs and students of industrial technology. Today, many industrial technology programs are in the business of industrial, technical, technology, and trade teacher education. As trends would go through the 1980s and 1990s, universities shifted many preparatory responsibilities to colleges and technical institutions. In many of these institutions, neither teaching certification nor graduate work is a necessary requirement for faculty. The ATEA and NAIT did, however, capitalize on this trend.

Similarly, NAITTE was not positioned to capitalize on trends in human resource development (HRD). Changes in the fields of international development and industrial training during the 1980s and 1990s brought a new focus in the form of HRD. While differences between the new HRD and the old-style training can be debated, organizations whose mission focused on HRD have prospered. Formerly known as the Professors' Network, an affiliate of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) was established in the mid 1990s. Some prominent NAITTE members packed their bags at this time, committed themselves to AHRD, and have not returned. AHRD's annual conference, once small, has grown in a few short years to a very respectable size.

The American Vocational Education Research Association (AVERA) is positioned over NAITTE as an umbrella organization that draws from a wide range of specializations in career and technical teacher education. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when these two organizations attracted the interests of the same members in many cases. With limitations on resources and time, many members who may have belonged to both organizations now choose one or the other. The idea of an umbrella organization for industrial, technical, technology, and trade teacher education, similar to what AVERA did for vocational education, was raised in 1961; but nothing emerged from this proposal. As Martin (1999) noted, NAITTE's precarious predicament is not merely due to a dwindling pool of members in a competitive market of organizations. This dwindling pool and competitive market should not be reasons to neglect significant issues regarding the gender and race of NAITTE's membership base. NAITTE has been, and without dramatic changes will continue to be, an organization for a predominantly white group of males.

Since 1937, AVA, now ACTE (38,000 members) has been positioned as NAITTE's host organization. Only recently has this relationship been seriously questioned, as ACTE reconfigured its rules of engagement, to the dismay of some NAITTE leaders. NAITTE's affiliations with other groups in ACTE, such as AVERA and the Technology Education Division, provide a bit of security, but have not translated into increased memberships. Other potential host organizations, such as the American Educational Research Association (23,000 members), the ASTD (70,000 members), the International Society for Performance Improvement (10,000 members), or the ITEA (5,500 members) offer assets that are different than ACTE's; but more investigation is necessary to determine details. Most NAITTE members would choose to continue with host affiliation relationships, if only for the networking resources offered.

In summary, competition for members across organizations similar to NAITTE has increased over the past decade in a market of a dwindling pool of funds, people, and time. During the 1960s and 1970s, when competition for specialists common to NAITTE was either nonexistent or was easily accommodated within a generous pool of resources, NAITTE prospered. Today, NAITTE finds itself without a niche. For example, CTTE has outdone NAITTE in the competition for technical and technology teacher educators. The generous funding of CTTE from ITEA and the Technical Foundation of America tilted the odds in the competition. The ATEA and NAIT have attracted college and university instructors of industrial technology, and AHRD has offered a specialized organization for industrial and military trainers. Trade and industrial educators no longer represent a definable niche, as most of these educators wear a number of hats, including industrial technologist and technology educator. AVERA offers an umbrella organization for career and work education researchers in NAITTE; and for some, opportunities to interact with home economists and business educators offer more appeal than the less diverse NAITTE. In effect, each of NAITTE's membership classifications has been more or less co-opted by counterpart specialist organizations.

Organizations once peripheral to NAITTE, such as the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education and the Association for Educational Communication and Technology, are attracting potential NAITTE members in this era of web-based instruction. As mentioned, professional honorary societies make competition for members even more complex. There are issues of national versus international organizations, but a more cosmopolitan image for NAITTE would not necessarily translate into international memberships. As an example, the ITEA, which was the result of the AIAA going international in 1987, has only a small percentage (2 percent) of members outside of U.S. borders. Without a more rigorous analysis of the organization and membership matrix, resolutions to increase the membership base of NAITTE are founded on wishful thinking at best.

A "Re-vision" for NAITTE: The 2006 Scenario

The first conference of the Design, Technology and Work Education Research Network (DTWER-Net) was held in Whistler Village, British Columbia, in May 2006. DTWER-Net was the result of a distillation of the strengths of organizations such as CTTE, NAITTE, UNESCO's International Project on Technical and Vocational Education (UNEVOC), the World Council of Associations for Technology Education (WOCATE), and the Pupil's Attitudes Toward Technology (PATT) conference. From its inception, the intention of the network was one of unifying the research base across design, technology and work education. Aggressive research practices in the network were initially aimed at demonstrating the arbitrariness of divisions that separated design from technology from work education. In the spirit of erasing boundaries, the Whistler conference was an attempt to coalesce DTWER-Net interests from a variety of countries. UNESCO, with interests established through the UNEVOC community, sponsored this first meeting. Appropriately, the first conference's theme was titled, "The Breaches and Reaches of Globalization." In 2004, upon the establishment of DTWER-Net, it was resolved that this loose but digitally connected network of researchers would meet every other year under the sponsorship of UNESCO and the UNEVOC umbrella.

To understand the genesis of DTWER-Net, it is important to review a bit of organizational history of the period between 2002-2004. In the spring of 2002, two NAITTE committees were struck, the first to consider the possibilities of DTWER-Net, and the second, more locally, to negotiate consolidations with AVERA and CTTE. NAITTE's strength had always been leadership in research, so it was no surprise that this organization would assume the charge of unifying researchers across technology and work education. The initiative to consolidate NAITTE and AVERA was quite timely. AVERA leaders were struggling with their journal and memberships, and the organization was out of step with the times, without a relevant representation of researchers with expertise in the intersection of technology and work. When NAITTE pooled its resources under the AVERA umbrella in 2004, this was the catalyst that spurred other specialist research organizations across the field of career and technical education to action under AVERA. The consolidation of NAITTE with CTTE stemmed from a long-standing division between technical educators who affiliated closely with trades, or more generally work education, and those who maintained a distance from trades and work education. NAITTE affiliates recognized that they could not ignore general trends toward the integration of general and vocational education, and CTTE affiliates recognized they could no longer ignore the importance of vocations in technology education. NAITTE members brought their expertise in adult education to the K-12 interests of CTTE members. In 2004, reconciliation was made: CTTE and NAITTE became one organization. Signifying NAITTE's influence, CTTE was renamed the Council of Researchers in Technology Education (CRTE). CRTE members resolved to meet at ACTE and ITEA inalternating years. NAITTE members who associated more closely with industrial and military training prior to the consolidations of 2004 shifted their loyalties to AHRD. Relationships established in NAITTE led to productive connections between CRTE and AHRD.

When the possibilities of DTWER-Net were being explored, it became clear that the interests of researchers in design education were necessary to unify progressions from a historical movement generally known as industrial education. This neglect of design education was a liability in the UNEVOC community, which was established in 1992 and has since then been "dedicated to developing and improving technical and vocational education in UNESCO's Member States." Indeed, DTWER-Net was a timely addition to the UNEVOC community. In the United States, a group of educators were championing design as the content base for technology education, and represented the interests of the design and technology education movement in England. Upon exploration, it was found that researchers in design and technology education were but a satellite of larger transformations in education around the world. Even in countries with a strong polytechnic past, such as Germany, educational practices for technology and work had shifted to balance a traditional technical-skill-based focus with a socio-technical focus.

Throughout countries across the world, in an era of globalization, the best educational practices were those that affected a balance across the technical-empirical, socio-political, and ethical-personal dimensions of technology and work. Technical skills in this era could not be effectively taught without being cast within the most inclusive context of technology, a context that included issues from design to labor to waste reduction. This larger transformation in educational practice had been advocated and documented by some of NAITTE's most active members in the pages of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , which had its resources integrated into the Journal of Technology Education and the Journal of Vocational Education Research at the end of 2004.

In hindsight, the integration of NAITTE into AVERA and CRTE appears to have been a part of the larger trend in the reduction of educational organizations across America. There was a time, not too long ago, when the proliferation of journals and organizations in education outpaced the energies of even the most dedicated of scholars. At this time in 2006, fewer specialist research organizations exist; and the trend continues toward larger, more general international networks of affiliation that sponsor meetings every other year. In reviewing this history, we can see that the transformation of NAITTE meant the transformation of the terrain across design, technology, and work education. The transformation of NAITTE was not without dissent, yet most of the NAITTE members who objected are among the most active in the research of CRTE and DTWER-Net. The spirit of NAITTE lived on, foremost in the emphasis on research now found in CRTE, DTWER-Net, and technology and work education in general. In a very real way, NAITTE was true to its mission through the transformation. NAITTE, or rather the NAITTE spirit, remains a "catalyst for excellence" in its affiliate fields.

Recommendations of the Committee

The following recommendations are made to the NAITTE Executive Committee.

• Provide mechanisms for extending the conversation on the transformation of NAITTE to the entire membership (e.g., journal issue, e-list serve, web site).
• Survey the NAITTE membership to establish a record of attitudes and opinions regarding the health, future, and transformation of NAITTE. Provide a stipend to the researcher appointed to conduct this survey.
• Appoint a committee to explore and outline the benefits and problems of consolidating with AVERA and CTTE.
• Appoint a committee to explore and outline the possibilities of establishing an international network of researchers in design, technology, and work education. The obvious starting points would be the UNEVOC and WOCATE communities.
• Investigate the possibilities of receiving grants from ACTE, ITEA, and the Technical Foundation of America to accommodate the previous recommendations for NAITTE's transformation over the next five years.
• Commit the Executive Committee to evaluating and making a decision on the results of the first five recommendations given in the report by December 2002, and initiate definitive and appropriate action by December 2003.

References

Bell, T. (Ed.). (2000) . Industrial Teacher Education Directory , CTTE and NAITTE. Millersville, PA: Department of Industry and Technology, Millersville University.

Evans, R. (1988) . The history of NAITTE . Homewood, IL: American Technical Publishers and NAITTE.

Evans, R. (1993) . The Miller study stops short of solutions. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , 30(3), 30-34.

Lewis T. (1998) . Toward the 21st century: Retrospect, prospect for American vocationalism . Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, and Center on Education and Training for Employment.

Mann, E. (1993) . President Mann says NAITTE is critically ill. News and Views of the NAITTE , 14(1), 1-2.

Martin, G. E. (1999, December) . Anticipating the new century-- Challenges for NAITTE . Presentation at the annual convention of the American Vocational Association, Orlando, FL.

Miller, P. (1993) . Needs assessment of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , 30(3), 8-25.

Rifkin, J. (1996) . The end of work . New York: Putman Publishing Group.

United States Office of Education, Office of Research and Improvement. (1998) . The quality of vocational education . From http://www.ed.gov/pubs/VoEd/Chapter1/Part3.html .

Walker, T. (1993) . Taking NAITTE's pulse: No easy job. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , 30(3), 26-29.

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Petrina is Associate Professor in the Technology Studies Department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. Petrina served as Chair of NAITTE's Ad Hoc Committee to consider the transformation of NAITTE. Petrina can be reached at stephen.petrina@ubc.ca .