The effects of executives' experiences and perceptions on their assessment of potential technological alliances

Researchers have only begun to provide explanations of how top executives' experiences and perceptions influence organizational decisions. Drawing from a broad theoretical base, this study tests the contention that top executives' personal experiences (age, educational background, and work experience), their perceptions of their firms' attitudes toward technology and risk, and their perceptions regarding their firms' past success with collaborative technological development influence their cognitive assessments of potential technological alliances. Results from the study suggest that top executives with a technical education place more weight on the opportunities provided by the alliance than those with other types of education. Moreover, executives from firms that are perceived to emphasize technology and to have had success with technological alliances in the past tend to focus more on the opportunities provided by the alliance and less on the riskiness of the venture. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

Using an analogical thinking model as an instructional tool to improve student cognitive ability in architecture design learning process

Lack of creativity is a problem often plaguing students from design-related departments. Therefore, this study is intended to incorporate analogical thinking in the education of architecture design to enhance students’ learning and their future career performance. First, this study explores the three aspects of architecture design curricula, interaction and students’ cognitive development. Then the study discusses learning based on analogical thinking into two parts: analogical learning and analogical reasoning. The samples in this study were the freshmen of the Department of Architecture, China University of Technology. The model was used in a five-week unit of the course of Architecture Design, a required course for all the freshmen. Questionnaires were given to the students before and after the unit to evaluate the influences of the model in the dimensions of Teaching, Teacher-student Interactions, Student–student Interactions, Cognitive Development, and Overall Learning Performance. The questionnaire results were collected and statistically analyzed. The analysis results indicated that, the students scored significantly higher in each of the dimension after the unit than before the unit. These findings suggested that the use of an analogical thinking model can be helpful in the teaching of architecture design. Hopefully, the findings of this study can provide helpful references for not only teaching of architecture design but also future related research.     

Perspectives on pupil creativity in design and technology in the lower secondary curriculum in England

This paper is based on work carried out as part of a research study into the professional practices of secondary design and technology teachers in England. It focused on fostering creativity or teaching for creativity as defined by the Robinson Report (1999, All our futures: creativity, culture and education. London: Department for Education and Employment (DfEE)) for pupils aged 11–14 years. The overall research question that drove this study was “to what extent can teachers influence the creativity of pupils aged 11–14 years in design and technology lessons?” The paper provides the basis used to generate a unique theoretical three-feature model or framework that can be used to explore creativity within an educational context.The findings of three investigations in the study are presented in this paper. The first and second investigations looked at what could be learnt from the professional practices of art and design and design and technology teachers and the views of four ‘expert’ teachers known for their ability to develop the creative potential of their pupils. The data is discussed under emerging themes and it is used to inform specific criteria in the evolving theoretical three-feature model for creativity. The model is then used to analyse the data from the third classroom based investigation and the findings are discussed under the emerging themes to help identify the issues related to fostering creativity within the design and technology classroom.This paper discusses the implications of the research for classroom practice and suggests that, as creativity is a complex, multi-faceted concept and process, the theoretical three-feature model and related criteria evolved in the study provides a sound framework to explore creativity within an educational context. As a tool it helps identify examples of good practice and highlight areas that require further attention by teachers aiming to foster their pupils’ creativity. It is suggested that design and technology teachers have lessons to learn from the practices of their art and design colleagues and ‘expert’ design and technology teachers. It is concluded that there is a need for greater understanding by teachers of their implicit theories regarding teaching, learning and creativity. A wider use could be made of the breadth of strategies outlined by the ‘expert’ teachers. This would help address the weakness identified in the school based study and strengthen classroom practice when teaching for creativity.     

Influence of problem-based learning strategy on enhancing student’s industrial oriented competences learned: an action research on learning weblog analysis

In order to respond to the ever-changing global economic environment, the technological and vocational education system in Taiwan needs to be dramatically reformed to the changing needs of the domestic industrial structure. Integrating practical talents with practical industrial experiences and competences can help avoid discrepancy and close the gap between vocational education and the practical demands of industries. Thus, to achieve the goals of technological and vocational education, it is necessary to incorporate instruction that meets the demands of the industrial-oriented manpower in Taiwan. In this study, the well-known problem-based learning (PBL) approach, utilized commonly in the educational area of medicine and business management, was integrated with the qualitative method of action research to explore how such a learning strategy could influence college students’ learning outcomes regarding industrial-oriented competences. The research results were induced from the empirical data collected via participatory classroom observations, and analyses of teachers’ instructional journals and semi-structural interviews. A survey with quasi-experimental design of the control group pretest and posttest was conducted by using an industrial-oriented competences scale to explore the influences of PBL on students’ learning outcomes of industrial-oriented competences. The findings are expected to shed light on the teaching and learning strategy of college students’ industrial-oriented competences and contribute to theoretical implications and future educational and industrial development of Taiwan.     

Identifying the gaps of fourth year degree pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in teaching engineering graphics and design

Engineering Graphics and Design is a technological subject which is offered in the Bachelor of Education degree from third to fourth year of the degree course. Fourth year pre-service teachers find EGD difficult to teach because of various reasons. Therefore the aim of the paper was to investigate fourth year pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge gaps in teaching EGD during their teaching practice. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach and eight pre-service teachers were purposefully selected to take part in the study. Findings of the paper found that pre-service teachers found teaching practice very short to do all the teaching tasks that is required of them. Some pre-service teachers did not have drawing models to make learning concrete to their learners. Assessment was done partially just to impress the university tutors and to conform to the schools’ rule and not to evaluate the learners’ understandings and their teaching.     

项目教学法在高校《服装工艺》课程中的应用与实践

项目教学法是师生共同实施一个完整的项目工作而进行的教学活动,在整个教学过程中既发挥了教师的主导作用,又体现了学生的主体作用。在《服装工艺》课教学中,实施项目教学法的具体步骤包括项目的准备、计划制定、计划实施、评估和交流。通过设计不同的项目将理论知识点和技能训练有机融合,可提高教学效果。     

Does it pay to acquire technological firms?

Abstract The paper focuses on several research questions: How do the firms differ in terms of their strategic objectives for foreign acquisitions? What are the determinants of ‘success’ of acquisition? What are the differences between the American and German firms in terms of their acquisition strategies and successes? Our special interest was to get a closer look into the technological motive of the foreign acquisitions. This made a two-step procedure necessary. A first survey of 86 firms had to identify those acquisitions which were motivated by technological interests through a questionnaire. Findings: There are four classes of companies with different motives for acquisitions: Market oriented entrepreneurs, Short-term profit seekers, Technological acquirers, Preemptive market protectors. The second survey investigated the process and the results of acquisitions with a special view on the role of research and development through 60 interviews in 30 acquisition cases in both acquiring and acquired units. Findings: A network of variables explains the success. The most important are context variables (uncertainty, cultural differences), size of both firms, low degree of formalization, expertise, and lack of conflicts about technological philosophy.     

Promoting student-led science and technology projects in elementary teacher education: entry into core pedagogical practices through technological design

Future elementary school teachers often lack self-efficacy for teaching science and technology. They are particularly anxious about encouraging children to carry-out student-directed, open-ended scientific inquiry and/or technological design projects. Moreover, because this often also is the case with practising elementary school teachers, it is difficult for student–teachers to gain practical experience facilitating student-led project work during practicum sessions. To provide student–teachers with expertise and motivation for promoting student-directed, open-ended project work, therefore, a group of future elementary teachers were taken through a constructivism-informed ‘apprenticeship’ during their university-based teaching methods course and then invited to make project work the subject of the action research that they were required to complete during their practicum. In this paper, successes that one student–teacher (out of 78 studied) experienced in promoting student-directed, open-ended technological design projects are reported. Although she judged children’s designs to be modestly successful, data indicate that her self-efficacy for promoting project work increased significantly. Analyses of qualitative data collected during the methods course and practicum also indicate that aspects of the curriculum, teachers, students and milieu appeared to contribute to this success. Such findings suggest that teacher educators should focus on helping future elementary teachers to develop expertise and motivation that would enable and encourage children to conduct technological design projects before conducting scientific inquiries. Such a tack may be the most pragmatic—and, arguably, epistemologically-sound—approach for helping ‘science- and technology-phobic’ student–teachers to move from the periphery to the core of practices in science and technology education.     

Differences and similarities between female students and male students that succeed within higher technical education: profiles emerge through the use of cluster analysis

This study focuses on female and male students who succeed in engineering programmes in Sweden, and why they have success. Data were collected through a questionnaire sent to all engineering students in Sweden registered for their seventh semester during year 2012 and about 30 % of the students in the cohort responded on several questions. The answers were then analysed and interpreted using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory and the concept of capital. The female-students as well as the male-students emerged as homogeneous groups, but SPSS-clustering shows differences and similarities between four female student-profiles and five male students-profiles. The female students who come to graduate as engineers have experiences and resources that seem to be fruitful: well-educated parents, positive attitudes to the engineer students’ traditions, and a positive view of the engineering profession. In addition, they value the traditional teaching with lectures and self-studies. They seem not to have been inspired by compulsory school teaching or teachers there. The male students have the same experiences and resources but there are differences. Among female students, a profile emerges which is absent among the male students and which emphasises the importance of doing good for society, people, and the environment in their future professional roles. Among male students, the student profiles which emerge include one with a primarily practical and technical capital despite the lack of a high degree of educational or scientific capital.     

Improving engineering skills in high school students: a partnership between university and K-12 teachers

The level of science skills in Spanish students are significantly below the average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and university teachers agree that the level of freshmen students’ skills is too low. Moreover, the number of engineering enrollments has been declining in recent years. The purpose of this study is to improve both the level of knowledge and skills of students upon entrance into engineering programs and their general opinion about engineering studies. The aim is to establish the importance of proper coordination between groups involved in the overall educational process and to avoid, at least in part, the decline in recent engineering enrollments. The project had the following four phases: (1) determination of the freshmen’s weakest concepts; (2) assessment of high schools students’ knowledge; (3) development of educational activities; and (4) re-assessment of high school students. These measures were complemented with the high school teachers’ opinions about the students improvements and analyses of the evolution of engineering enrollments. Most of the participants significantly improved their knowledge and skills. Similarly, high school teachers believed that the attitude of the students toward engineering improved significantly.     

Post-Failure Success: Sensemaking in Problem Representation Reformulation

Failure is an inevitable feature of innovation, and management research promulgates the importance of learning from it. Key to excelling at an innovation-based strategy is understanding the processes that can turn failures into successes. However, post-failure success remains elusive. Although failure signals that the innovation journey is off course, shifting trajectory is difficult, because it may require revising assumptions and reformulating the project’s problem representation. Using comparative case studies, this study set out to understand how problem representations are reformulated. Employing case method and comparing data versus theory iteratively, the important role of sensemaking and of leadership behaviors in driving post-failure success became salient. Findings show that problem representations post-failure require a process of problem formulation characterized by sensemaking and that innovative solutions are enabled by the reformulation of problem representations that spring from prospective sensemaking. Furthermore, this article identifies leadership change behavior as the linchpin driving a problem formulation process characterized by prospective sensemaking that catalyzes innovative solutions and explains why some projects thrive post-failure and others do not. This article provides empirical support to the theoretical work of the literature on problem formulation, while extending the learning-from-failure literature by emphasizing and demonstrating the process driving post-failure success. The major implication of our study is that different leadership behaviors may foster different types of sensemaking (retrospective or prospective), and that, in turn, the type of sensemaking matters for how a problem is reformulated. Ultimately, this article concludes that in the context of project failure, problem reformulation that springs from prospective sensemaking enables innovative solutions post-failure.     

Firm Adaptation,Preadaptation, and Sequential Ambidexterity in Firm Boundaries During an Era of Ferment and an Era of Incremental Change

We explore the relation between firms’ internal skills and knowledge from past applications and the mechanism they use to adapt during an era of ferment and then to an era of incremental change in a new technological domain. We extend current research on incumbent firms’ success at facing radical technological change by studying dynamic firm boundaries of incumbents within the industry along a new technological trajectory. We use the concepts of problem, search, and solution from the knowledge‐based view and foundational view of knowledge recombination to develop our theoretical framework. We propose that preadapted firms—the ones with accumulated internal skills and knowledge from past applications that prove relevant by chance to the new technological domain—are more likely to choose internal technology sourcing during an era of ferment (than nonpreadapted firms). Subsequently, firms that choose internal sourcing during an era of ferment are more likely (than firms that source externally) to choose external sourcing during an era of incremental change leading to greater market acceptance for their innovation. Analysis of a longitudinal data set of 161 U.S. banks provides support for our hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate an important temporal dependency between internal and external sourcing, thus contributing to the sequential ambidexterity literature. Our theoretical framework provides support to the foundational view of knowledge recombination and contributes to the knowledge‐based view of the firm.     

“课程思政”理念下金融学课程的教学设计及创新

将课程思政融入金融学专业的教学是实现立德树人教育教学目标的重要途径。利用金融学专业课程众多历史案例,通过案例教学将金融知识、金融技能、金融素养和思政元素充分结合。运用线上线下相结合的翻转课堂教学方式,践行以学生为主体的教育观,将社会主义核心价值观和中华民族传统文化融入金融专业知识,为中国金融安全和长远发展培养具有专业知识和金融职业道德的全能型金融人才。     

Assessing changes in teachers’ attitudes toward interdisciplinary STEM teaching

Integrating engineering and technology concepts into K-12 science and math curricula through engineering design project-based learning has been found to increase students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), however preparing teachers to shift to interdisciplinary teaching remains a significant challenge. Primarily teachers need to develop both skills and attitudes toward interdisciplinary teaching. In doing so, professional development (PD) is considered a key component in helping teachers through this transformation process. In an educational environment of accountability, measuring the effects of PD programs on teacher behaviors and capacity is essential but often elusive. The current study describes the change in attitudes to interdisciplinary teaching of 29 self-selected middle and high school teachers who participated a PD workshop and in delivering a 12–15 week interdisciplinary teaching and design problem unit that spanned multiple STEM subjects. This quasi-experimental pilot study implemented a single group pretest–posttest design using survey methods to collect data from the participants at two intervals; at the time of the PD workshop and at the completion of the teaching unit that emphasized a long-term engineering design problem. The goals of this research are to (1) assess the changes in attitudes to interdisciplinary teaching, attitudes to teamwork, teaching satisfaction, and resistance to change, (2) explore relationships among these changes, (3) and describe the variation in these changes across teachers’ gender, school level, discipline taught, and education level.     

Discerning technological systems related to everyday objects: mapping the variation in pupils’ experience

Understanding technology today implies more than being able to use the technological objects present in our everyday lives. Our society is increasingly integrated with technological systems, of which technological objects, and their function, form a part. Technological literacy in that context implies understanding how knowledge is constituted in technology, and in particular how concrete (objects) and abstract levels (systems) are linked. This article has an educational focus concerning systems in technology education. Using a phenomenographic approach, the study explores pupils’ experiences of technological systems as embedded in four everyday objects. We identify five qualitatively different ways of understanding systems, ranging from a focus on using the particular objects, over-focussing on the function of objects, seeing objects as part of a process, and seeing objects as system components, to understanding objects as embedded in systems. As a conclusion, we suggest an educational strategy for teaching about systems in technology education.     

Bridging a gap: in search of an analytical tool capturing teachers’ perceptions of their own teaching

Computing and computers are introduced in school as important examples of technology, sometimes as a subject matter of their own, and sometimes they are used as tools for other subjects. All in all, one might even say that learning about computing and computers is part of learning about technology. Lately, many countries have implemented programming in their curricula as a means to address society’s dependence on, and need for programming knowledge and code. Programming is a fairly new school subject without educational traditions and, due to the rapid technological development, in constant change. This means that most programming teachers must decide for themselves what and how to teach. In this study, programming teachers’ teaching is studied. With the aim of exploring the connection/possible gap between teacher’s intentions and the teacher’s instructional practice, an expansion of the conceptual apparatus of phenomenography and variation theory is tested. In the article, phenomenography and variation theory and the suggested supplementary theoretical tool (Georg Henrik von Wright’s model of logic of events) are briefly presented and then deployed upon one selected case. Findings reveal that teachers’ intentions (reflected in their actions) include an emphasis (of teachers’ side) on the importance of balancing theory and practice, using different learning strategies, encouraging learning by trial-and-error and fostering collaboration between students for a deeper understanding of concepts. In conclusion, logic of events interpretations proves to be useful as a complementary tool to the conceptual apparatus of phenomenography.     

Spatial ability learning through educational robotics

Several authors insist on the importance of students’ acquisition of spatial abilities and visualization in order to have academic success in areas such as science, technology or engineering. This paper proposes to discuss and analyse the use of educational robotics to develop spatial abilities in 12 year old students. First of all, a course to introduce robotics to 6th grade primary school students was designed. The key intention was to prepare practical and motivating sessions in order to foster the students’ involvement in hands-on learning. Hence, during the sessions of the course, challenges were provided for the students, in order to develop their capabilities as proficient problem solvers. The teacher assisted and guided the students, and the students were encouraged to solve the problems by themselves, working in 3-members teams. The main goal of this paper is to discuss and analyse the potential usefulness of educational robotics to develop spatial abilities. To carry out the analysis, students were randomly divided into an experimental group (EG), which participated in the robotics course, and a control group (CG), which did not take part in the robotics course. The extensive existing literature for spatial ability evaluation was analysed and reviewed and a pre-test and a post-test were prepared for use in the research study. Initially, the spatial ability of both EG and CG students was assessed with the pre-test. Then, after finishing the robotics course, the same sets of students were tested with the post-test. An extensive analysis of the results is provided in the paper. Results show that the positive change in spatial ability of the participants in the robotics course (EG) was greater than change evident in the students who did not join the course (CG). The improvement was statistically significant. The results also show that the overall performance of the students depends on the instruments used to evaluate their spatial abilities. Hence, this study manifests clearly the importance of the selection of those instruments.     

Design-without-make: challenging the conventional approach to teaching and learning in a design and technology classroom

The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the use of a design-without-make unit as part of the design and technology curriculum with pupils aged 14. Three research questions drove the study: (a) What sort of designing do pupils do when they work collaboratively to design without having to make what they have designed? (b) What is the teachers’ attitude to design-without-make? (c) What is the pupils’ attitude to design-without-make? The study is a small pilot and data were collected using semi-structured interviews with a class teacher and two pupils and detailed scrutiny of five pupils’ design ideas developed during 6 lessons towards the end of an 18 lessons teaching sequence. Findings indicate that the teacher and pupils in this study responded favourably to design-without-make. The pupils’ designing was highly iterative, creative, involved making a wide range of design decisions and revealed understanding of technological concepts.     

What pupils can learn from working with robotic direct manipulation environments

This study investigates what pupils aged 10–12 can learn from working with robots, assuming that understanding robotics is a sign of technological literacy. We conducted cognitive and conceptual analysis to develop a frame of reference for determining pupils’ understanding of robotics. Four perspectives were distinguished with increasing sophistication; “psychological”, “technological”, “function”, and “controlled system”. Using Lego® Mindstorms® NXT robots, as an example of a Direct Manipulation Environment, we developed and conducted a lesson plan to investigate pupils’ reasoning patterns. There is ample evidence that pupils have little difficulty in understanding that robots are man-made technological and functional artifacts. Pupils’ understanding of the controlled system concept, more specifically the complex sense-reason-act loop that is characteristic of robotics, can be fostered by means of problem solving tasks. The results are discussed with respect to pupils’ developing technological literacy and the possibilities for teaching and learning in primary education.