Pupils consciousness of their mental processes

We are all conscious of a wide range of our stronger feelings and desires, though not conscious of them all. Most teachers are also conscious of possessing and using a wide range of more general concepts such as the use of triangles for strength, or use of levers and flowcharts. However, we and our pupils only slowly and in a very variable manner develop consciousness of the range of our feelings and concepts and of the way we use them. This paper discusses the meaning of consciousness and its typical features, the advantages of becoming conscious of our concepts and tactics, disadvantages that can arise, and the various ways that have been used to help pupils become more conscious. Descriptions will be given of methods and results from published curriculum developments, within and outside technology teaching. I propose in this paper to review the meaning, typical features and extent of the phenomenon we call consciousness and then its advantages and disadvantages, leaving time to discuss these at the end. I am assuming that teachers will be more interested in the ways available to us if we decide to help pupils to consciousness. I have extracted these from studies of methods which claim a general success.