Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, 
capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is 
recognised to occupy a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than 
associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While 
recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking 
in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue 
that transformation may be considered as a epistemic source for technology in a similar way to 
‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology’s 
intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a 
technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime 
source of technological knowledge for pupils.