Teaching Technological Knowledge: determining and supporting student learning of technological concepts

This paper reports on findings related to Technological Knowledge from Stage Two of the Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning (TKNoT: Imps) research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how learning related to the components Technological Modelling (TM), Technological Products (TP) and Technological Systems (TS) could be supported. These components fall within the Technological Knowledge (TK) strand of technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) and as such, reflect the key generic concepts or ‘big ideas’ of technology. During this stage of the research further exploration was also undertaken to determine how student understanding of these three components of technology education progressed from level 1 to 8 of the NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). This resulted in a significant review of the Indicators of Progression for TM, TP and TS, providing clarification of the nature of the progression expected of students in each component as well as increased teacher guidance to support such progression. Common misconceptions, partial understandings and alternative concepts related to these components were confirmed and explained and five case studies were developed to illustrate strategies employed by teachers and their impact on student learning related to these three components.     

Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? The effect of changes in product features over time

This article examines how feature additions and removals affect consumers' preferences and the attributions they make regarding why these changes occurred. In two experiments, using a range of hypothetical and real products, we find that consumers' preferences for current product formulations are influenced by prior formulations and that changes in consumer preference are more extreme for feature removals than for feature additions. We further find that consumers attribute feature additions to causes that are more external to the firm and more stable over time than those for feature removals. Consumers' product evaluations are more negative when the cause of a feature removal is attributed more internally to the firm. However, consumers' product evaluations are not significantly affected by their attributions for feature additions. Finally, the degree to which the changing feature is linked to a brands' equity moderates these findings.