A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Student teachers’ views and experiences on actualising technology education in practice
Authors: Eila Lindfors
Editors: Marc J. de Vries, Arien Bekker-Holtland, Gerald van Dijk
Conference name: PATT, Technology Education for 21st Century Skills
Publishing place: Utrecht
Publication year: 2016
Journal: PATT : proceedings
Book title : PATT-32 Proceedings: Technology Education for 21st Century Skills
First page : 285
Last page: 292
Number of pages: 8
ISSN: 2542-3592
Web address : https://www.iteea.org/File.aspx?id=39504&v=7f12ac31
The article presents a study on student teacher experiences and views after authentic workshops realized in a local school. The technology education theme day consisted of three different workshops related to electronics and automation in MecLab and OPT10 learning environments. The workshops were designed and organized by craft, design and technology student teachers in elementary school on 5th and 6th grades (11 and 12 years old pupils) as a part of their master studies and the INNOTEK-project. Learning environments were FESTO high tech automation learning environments which presupposed and taught electrical circuits, automation control and programming skills. The data is from semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions which student teachers (12 teams with 2-3 persons in each) answered as teams after the workshops. The data analysis is qualitative inductive category development content analysis. The main result is that experiential technology teaching and learning seems to support teachers’ and pupils’ motivation on technology education. Especially girls were very enthusiastic learners. The study gives an example on how to implement technology education in basic education as well as in teacher education. Even though the data is small the results are consistent with earlier research and give special hints on how to solve the problem of girls’ negative attitudes towards technology and technology education.