Recent Research in Learning Technological Concepts and Processes

This paper examines recent research in student learning of technological concepts and processes. To explore this area three inter-related aspects are considered; existing concepts of technology, technological knowledge and processes. Different views of technology and technology education are reflected in both research outcomes and curriculum documents. Teacher and student perceptions of technology impact on the way in which technology is undertaken in the classroom. Teacher's perceptions of technology influence what they perceive as being important in learning of technology. student's perceptions of technology and technology education influence what knowledge and skills they operationalise in a technological task and hence affect student technological capability. Technological concepts and processes are often defined in different ways by particular groups. Subject subcultures are strongly held by both teachers and students. The influence of subject subcultures and communities of practice will be discussed in terms of defining and operationalising technological concepts and processes. Technological concepts are not consistently defined in the literature. For students to undertake technological activities, knowledge and processes cannot be divorced. Recent research highlights the problems when processes are emphasised over knowledge. This paper will examine different technological concepts in an attempt to create a critical balance between knowledge and process. Much of the literature in technology education has rightly emphasised definitions, curriculum issues, implementation and teacher training. This paper argues that it is now time to place a great emphasis on in-depth research on student understanding of technological concepts and processes and ways in which these can be enhanced.     

Making the Processes of Designing Explicit Within an Information Technology Environment

In this paper, technology is described as involving processes whereby resources are utilised to satisfy human needs or to take advantage of opportunities, to develop practical solutions to problems. This study, set within one type of technology context, information technology, investigated how, through a one semester undergraduate university course, elements of technological processes were made explicit to students. While it was acknowledged in the development and implementation of this course that students needed to learn technical skills, technological skills and knowledge, including design, were seen as vital also, to enable students to think about information technology from a perspective that was not confined and limited to `technology as hardware and software'. This paper describes how the course, set within a three year program of study, was aimed at helping students to develop their thinking and their knowledge about design processes in an explicit way. An interpretive research approach was used and data sources included a repertory grid `survey'; student interviews; video recordings of classroom interactions, audio recordings of lectures, observations of classroom interactions made by researchers; and artefacts which included students' journals and portfolios. The development of students' knowledge about design practices is discussed and reflections upon student knowledge development in conjunction with their learning experiences are made. Implications for ensuring explicitness of design practice within information technology contexts are presented, and the need to identify what constitutes design knowledge is argued.     

The Influences of Teacher Knowledge and Authentic Formative Assessment on Student Learning in Technology Education

Students involved in holistic technological practice need to develop an understanding of technological practice outside the classroom and to participate in tasks set as close as practicable to actual technological practice. This paper investigates the context of assessment and its relationship to achievement and the importance of teacher knowledge to student technological practice. I argue that ‘out of context’ assessment tasks do not give an accurate indication of achievement levels of the children assessed. Introduced is the Model of Student Technological Practice, which identifies four constraints that influence student technological practice. A significant factor is teacher knowledge, as it impacts greatly on the quality of feedback given to students by their teachers. Timely teacher intervention and formative assessment feedback will alter student technological practice and should improve the students’ likelihood of developing successful outcomes.     

Design knowledge and teacher–student interactions in an inventive construction task

The teacher plays an important role in the Technology and Design (T&D) classroom in terms of guiding students in their design process. By using concepts developed within engineering philosophy along with a framework for teacher–student interactions the design process in a T&D classroom is classified. The material shows that four of six predefined categories of design knowledge and three of seven predefined classes of activity are present in the material. Findings suggest that two categories of design knowledge, fundamental design concepts and practical considerations, are particularly significant in the students’ work. The teacher’s influence with respect to particularly the first of these categories is crucial for the students’ design process. Direct trial is found as the students’ dominating activity for solving the technological challenges. The results indicate that it is beneficial for students to be introduced to an operational principle before they can be innovative and develop their own design configuration when they establish their fundamental design concept. Curriculum developers, designers of teaching materials as well as teachers should take into account the students’ need of sufficient time to explore their design configuration.     

Student technological creativity using online problem-solving activities

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of online (web-based) creative problem-solving (CPS) activities on student technological creativity and to examine the characteristics of student creativity in the context of online CPS. A pretest–posttest quasi-experiment was conducted with 107 fourth-grade students in Taiwan. The quantitative analysis revealed that the technological creativity of the online-CPS students was better than that of the traditional group. It was evident that students in the online-CPS groups were better at analytic than at synthetic thinking. Metaphor and analogy were used to produce new ideas most frequently. In addition to generating ideas by themselves, students arrived at solutions by refining and adapting others’ thoughts with little discussion or interaction on the web. Consideration of the feasibility of production was the most important factor in the technological creativity of students.     

Visible parts,invisible whole: Swedish technology student teachers’ conceptions about technological systems

Technological systems are included as a component of national technology curricula and standards for primary and secondary education as well as corresponding teacher education around the world. Little is known, however, of how pupils, students, and teachers conceive of technological systems. In this article we report on a study investigating Swedish technology student teachers’ conceptions of technological systems. The following research question is posed: How do Swedish technology student teachers conceive of technological systems? Data was collected through in-depth qualitative surveys with 26 Swedish technology student teachers. The data was analysed using a hermeneutic method, aided by a theoretical synthesis of established system theories (system significants). The main results of the study are that the technology student teachers expressed diverse conceptions of technological systems, but that on average almost half of them provided answers that were considered as undefined. The parts of the systems that the students understood were mostly the visible parts, either components, devices, or products such as buttons, power lines, hydroelectric plants, or the interface with the software inside a mobile phone. However, the ‘invisible’ or abstract aspects of the technological systems, such as flows of information, energy or matter, or control operations were difficult to understand for the majority of the students. The flow of information was particularly challenging in this regard. The students could identify the input and often the output of the systems, that is, what systems or components do, but the processes that take place within the systems were elusive. Comparing between technological systems also proved difficult for many students. The role of humans was considered important but it was mostly humans as users not as actors on a more systemic level, for example, as system owners, innovators, or politicians. This study confirms previous research in that the students had a basic understanding of structure, input and output of a technological system. Thus, the adult students in this study did not seem to have better understanding of technological systems than school pupils and teachers in previous studies, although this is in line with previous investigations on the general system thinking capabilities of children and adults. The most important implication of this study is that students need to be trained in systems thinking, particularly regarding how components work and connect to each other, flows (especially of information), system dependency, and the human role in technological systems.     

Towards a Model for Teacher Development in Technology Education: From Research to Practice

This paper reports on a series of interventions in New Zealand schools in order to enhance the teaching of, and learning in, technology as a new learning area. It details the way in which researchers worked with teachers to introduce technological activities into the classroom, the teachers' reflections on this process and the subsequent development of activities. These activities were undertaken in 14 classrooms (8 primary and 6 secondary).The research took into account past experiences of school-based teacher development and recommendations related to teacher change. Extensive use was made of case-studies from earlier phases of the research, and of the draft technology curriculum, in order to develop teachers' concepts of technology and technology education. Teachers then worked from these concepts to develop technological activities and classroom strategies. The paper also introduces a model that outlines factors contributing to school technological literacy, and suggests that teacher development models will need to allow teachers to develop technological knowledge and an understanding of technological practice, as well as concepts of technology and technology education, if they are to become effective in the teaching of technology.     

A pedagogic approach to enhance creative <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ideation</Emphasis> in classroom practice

The real intent for technology education is to prepare young people so that they may fully participate and function in human society. To achieve this aim, learners are guided towards the development of attributes that include perceptive, critical, creative and informed decision making. Although effective teaching strives to inspire the creative spark in every learner, there is little guidance to inform actual classroom practice. The selection of strategies and implementation methods that engender creative responses in students, is usually left to an individual teacher’s interpretation. A working knowledge of design processing provides a most advantageous methodology to guide teaching and learning as students develop ways “of knowing through thinking and doing,” Sharma and Poole (Des Manag Inst 20(4):64–74, 2010) within classroom design and technological practice. This article looks at the broad stage of Ideation in creative design practice, where designers instigate and generate ideas within their own practice. Insight and transferable skills are observed to inform classroom practice. One event from the ideation stage of design practice processing is selected to enhance student visual communication skills. A pedagogic approach is then shared to inform the implimentation of a teaching and learning strategy that has been trialled with design (aged from 12 to 18 years) and Initial Teacher Education adult students.     

The clock project: gears as visual-tangible representations for mathematical concepts

As we have noticed from our own classroom experiences, children often find it difficult to identify the adequate operations learned in mathematics class when they are solving mechanical-operators problems in Technology class. We wanted to design a project that exploits the idea of a hands-on relationship between mathematics and technology to teach students the concept of ‘transmission coefficient’ in schools. Our purpose was to bridge mathematical knowledge and mechanical parts in technological devices. Our belief was that visual-tangible representations enhance human cognition by scaffolding the information process. We supplied a kit with rubber foam (Fomi) and balsa wood parts to construct an analogical clock. This included a series of gears to work with three different ratios. The project was conducted in 2007 and 2008, with 38 students ranging from 10 to 14 years of age. The students were from the 5th and 7th grades in two different schools. The project included six stages of both theory and hands-on work. In a final stage, the students were given a written test. All students were able to make workable systems of their design for a time-measuring device. This proved important for technological education. On the other hand, manipulating gears along with visual reasoning strategies allowed all students to achieve an understanding of operations with fractions. We think this is a major achievement in mathematical education.     

Young children’s views of the technology process: an exploratory study

This paper describes an exploratory study of an aspect of the technological knowledge of two groups of five-year-old students in their first year at school. Their emerging understandings of the steps required to develop a new product were investigated through a series of interviews. A theoretical framework linking technological knowledge to ‘funds of knowledge’ from experiences outside the classroom supported the analysis. The data suggest that young children draw on a broad range of experiences and knowledge, often uncritically, in order to explain how things are made. They are able to transfer their understandings of the technological process from one experience to another particularly when they have the language and background experiences to support them. Of particular note however, is that they were often unfamiliar with the properties of materials and therefore unable to anticipate the processes necessary to convert raw materials into a final product. The research also highlighted some key considerations for working with young children in this area.     

Human, technological and organizational aspects influencing the production scheduling process

This study of scheduling work in practice addresses how the production-scheduling processes in four companies are influenced by human, technological, and organizational aspects. A conclusion is that the outcome of the scheduling process is influenced by the scheduler adding human capabilities that cannot be automated, by technical constraints in the scheduled production system and by the available scheduling software tools. Furthermore, the outcome is influenced not only by how the scheduling process is formally organized, but also by the scheduler's informal authority and the role taken to interconnect activities between different organizational groups. The findings from the study support a number of previous studies done on scheduling in practice whilst giving new insights into their interpretation.     

A conceptual model for knowledge dimensions and processes in design and technology projects

The present study sheds new light on the knowledge dimensions and processes that occur when designing new concepts and prototypes in higher education. In particular, this study aims to develop the conceptual understanding of activities and processes that help students to gain new knowledge and understanding while designing new products and services. I employed two data collection phases among undergraduate students with qualitative abductive data analyses in order to create a conceptual framework for understanding how new knowledge is created and managed in students’ social interactions. This framework also enables us to distinguish the user, business, technological and methodological knowledge dimensions that constitute the elemental perspectives for design processes. This study emphasises the need for students to use diverse methods to gain new knowledge for inventing and designing new technological solutions.     

Figuring the world of designing: Expert participation in elementary classroom

The purpose of the present article was to analyze the interaction between elementary students and a professional design expert. The expert was present in the classroom, facilitating a collaborative lamp designing process together with the teacher. Using the notion of figured worlds (Holland et al. 1998), we explored how learning could be expanded beyond traditional schooling by bridging the world of professional designing and the world of the inquiry-oriented classroom. The data consisted of video-recorded design sessions (N = 11) and the “Lamp Designing” view of the project’s electronic database. A qualitative content analysis was conducted for categorizing the social settings, the design inquiry phases, and the designer’s activities during the sessions. Three distinctive foci of the participants’ activity were identified in the present study: (1) Design rationale, (2) Design practices, and (3) Design community. The results indicate that, with the designer’s support, relatively young students became aware of the rationale directing the design practice, and were able to solve multifaceted, complex design tasks. The figured world of designing was collaboratively created in the classroom during the continuous interaction between the designer and the students. This enabled the students to recognize the meaning of the diverse design activities and practices they were learning. The figured world of designing was perceived as a world of possibility for the students, providing them new insights for learning within the world of schooling.     

Fostering creativity from an emotional perspective: Do teachers recognise and handle students’ emotions?

Emotions have a significant effect on the processes of designing and creative thinking. In an educational context, some emotions may even be detrimental to creativity. To further explore the link between creativity and emotion, a series of interviews were conducted with design and technology (D&T) teachers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing concerning their experiences of working with students on design projects. The intent was to investigate how these teachers understood and managed their students’ emotions while teaching creative design skills. Some teachers indicated that they understood their students’ emotions through observing their behaviour, connecting with them by synchronising emotions or by evaluating student performance. The teachers also reported using various other methods to handle their students’ emotions. This study highlights the importance of equipping D&T teachers with skills for awareness and regulation of emotions so that they can better enable students to cultivate creativity in the design process.     

Nurturing the designerly thinking and design capabilities of five-year-olds: technology in the new entrant classroom

Technology is one of eight learning areas of the New Zealand national curriculum. It aims to develop a broad technological literacy through students participating in programmes in which the practice of technological development is experienced, as is knowledge informing practice, and students gain an understanding of technology as a domain in its own right. In New Zealand children begin school at 5 years of age and this paper describes a classroom research project during which these students design and then construct a photo frame. The inducement for this development arose from students needing to safely transport home and then display a class photograph. This provided the opportunity for developing technological knowledge and skills within a real and relevant context—two key drivers when working with young students (Ministry of Education 2007) [MoE]. The results of this project suggest that teaching technology to five-year-old students is achievable and a valuable addition to other learning opportunities provided in the new entrant classroom. Strategies are suggested that will enable students to successfully achieve their goals whilst gaining a simple understanding of the technological process. By making good use of these it is possible to create a worthwhile and imaginatively challenging activity that reflects the essence of the technology education curriculum.     

Student teachers of technology and design into industry: a Northern Ireland case study

This paper, based in Northern Ireland, is a case study of an innovative programme which places year 3 B.Ed. post-primary student teachers of Technology and Design into industry for a five-day period. The industrial placement programme is set in an international context of evolving pre-service field placements and in a local context defined by the Northern Ireland Curriculum (CCEA 2007); a rationale for the inclusion of Technology and Design within that curriculum; and the promotion of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) agenda. Undertaken in collaboration with a range of industrial partners, the placements aim to give the student teachers an opportunity to spend time in industry. All the students concerned started their teacher education degree straight from school and therefore are without industrial experience. As a result of the placements the students gained valuable industrial experience and thereby further enhanced their working knowledge and understanding in their main subject area of Technology and Design, in particular, and other curricular areas, in general. The students report many benefits, both personally and professionally, to be gained from the placements typically the opportunity to see a range of industrial processes, many of which they are required to teach, and to gain a better understanding of the link between content of Technology and Design education and the activities of industry. This case study is based on feedback from the 2010 to 2011 cohort of students whose comments confirm the inherent value of exposing student teachers to industrial environments.     

Progression in Technology Education in New Zealand: Components of Practice as a Way Forward

Understanding and undertaking technological practice is fundamental to student learning in technology education in New Zealand, and the enhancement of student technological literacy. The implementation of technology into New Zealand’s core curriculum has reached the stage where it has become critical that learning programmes are based on student progression to allow for a seamless education in technology from early primary to senior secondary. For this to occur, teachers and students need to focus learning on key features of technology education. This paper is based on research initiated in 2001 which explored the nature of progression of student learning in technology. It draws on findings from research undertaken in New Zealand classrooms in 1999–2000 that resulted in the development of the technology assessment framework (TAF), (as reported in detail Compton & Harwood 2003). The 1999–2001 research was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Findings from the 2001 research allowed for the identification of key features of technology education that are relevant across all age groups, contexts and technological areas. These key features were collectively termed components of practice. The three components of practice established to date are brief development, planning for practice, and outcome development and evaluation. This paper discusses the development of progression matrices for each of these and provides illustrative examples of student work levelled against the matrix indicators of progression for brief development.     

Taking part in the dance: technology teachers interacting with communities of practice

This research investigated how secondary school technology teachers planned and implemented units that enabled students to access authentic technological practice through their contact with a community of practice (CoP). It was found that when teachers plan to access a community of practice for their students a complex dance-style relationship develops between the three parties involved. Unplanned interactions can have a significant effect on the planned teaching unit. If teachers are reflexive to the demands of the student and the CoP representative, there is the potential for the development of teaching programmes with technological outcomes that reflect authentic technological practice.     

The teacher–community of practice–student interaction in the New Zealand technology classroom

This research investigated how secondary school technology teachers planned and implemented units that enabled students to access authentic technological practice through their contact with a community of practice (CoP). It was found that when teachers plan to access a community of practice for their students a complex dance-style relationship develops between the three parties involved. Unplanned interactions can have a significant effect on the planned teaching unit. If teachers are reflexive to the demands of the student and the CoP representative, there is the potential for the development of teaching programmes with technological outcomes that reflect authentic technological practice.