AJTE Special Issue 2025 Editorial Reimagining Human–Technological Futures: Insights from ATERC 2024

Abstract

This special issue of the Australasian Journal of Technology Education presents research from the 2024 Australian Technology Education Research Conference (ATERC). The conference, held in Sydney under the theme “Reimagining Human–Technological Futures,” provided a platform for Australian and international researchers to share new work on the changing purposes and practices of technology education.

The papers selected for this issue represent the depth and variety of current research across the field. They include studies on artificial intelligence and cultural representation, gender and equity in technology teacher education, teacher preparation and professional identity, design-led pedagogies, curriculum development, mechatronics education, and the role of play in fostering creativity and computational thinking among young learners.

Collectively, these contributions show a field responding to technological change while centring values such as cultural awareness, ethical responsibility, and learner agency. Several recurrent themes are evident: (a) ethics and responsibility, (b) agency and empowerment, (c)  inclusion and equity, and (d) curricular coherence for a technology-rich future. Importantly, taken together, the papers in this issue strengthen the intellectual foundations of Technology Education by clarifying its core ways of thinking, making, and evaluating. This positions the field as one that is conceptually robust, pedagogically principled, and oriented toward the deliberate design of preferred technological futures. Below we briefly introduce each paper, before identifying the central cross-cutting themes that resonate across the collection.