factors that influence children's developing perceptions of technology

Factors that Influence Children’s DevelopingPerceptions of Technology

TINA JARVIS

School of Education, 21 University Road, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RF, UK

and

LÉONIE J. RENNIE

Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University of Technology, Perth,Australia

ABSTRACT: Two instruments designed to ascertain children’s conceptions of ‘technology’were given to 315 English children in Years 2–6. A subset of 81 children and their teacherswere interviewed. Responses to the same instruments were collected from 745 WesternAustralian children in the same year groups. Subsequently their teachers and 164 Australianchildren were interviewed. The Australian and English children had a similar range of conceptsto explain technology, but the frequency of concepts varied. The results suggest that the stagesof developing an inclusive concept of technology are mainly chronological, but the ratesvary with individuals depending on a number of inter-related factors including home andschool influence, ability, gender and opportunity to discuss ideas. Examination of these factorssuggests there is a need for specific curriculum provision in technology based on adequatein-service training of teachers, which should also clarify the differences between scienceand technology. Children also need to be enabled to clarify their ideas through focusedactivities.

Keywords: concept development, primary, technology, technological education

INTRODUCTION

Numerous countries throughout the world are seeking to introduce designtechnology into their primary curriculum. For example, South Africa, Nataland New Zealand aim to include it in their primary schooling by the begin-ning of the next century (Benson, 1998). They recognise that designtechnology can develop knowledge, understanding, technical and interper-sonal skills that are essential for future citizens in this increasingly scientificand technological world. As technological advances make changes in societypossible, every citizen needs to be sufficiently informed to judge whethersociety wants that change. Additionally more people will be needed to createthe technological products of this rapidly changing society.

As England was one of the first countries to have a statutory require-ment that design technology should be taught in the primary school, it isimportant that both the successes and problems of this experience areconsidered by other countries to enable them to introduce design technology

ITDE Art No. 142 PIPS. NO. 181806DISK, CP

International Journal of Technology and Design Education 8, 261–279, 1998. 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

effectively into their curriculum. One problem has been that the term ‘tech-nology’ is used in many ways leading to imperfect communication betweenbusinesses, educators and their pupils. For example, teachers in Englandneed to explain the Technology National Curriculum’s approach as adiscrete, holistic area of study concerned with designing and making toindustrialists who regard technology as the practical application of science(George, 1994). This will not be possible while teachers are confusedthemselves.

Teachers, as do many other people, hold a variety of concepts of ‘tech-nology’. For example, some primary school teachers explain technologyas the application of science. Others see it as an all-embracing humanactivity involving designing and making products and devising organisa-tions. Yet others see it solely as model-making in the classroom. What isconcerning is that individual teachers are inconsistent about their expla-nation. In addition, many teachers are unaware that their view is not theonly one, often leading to impaired communication between colleagues. Forexample, two teachers unsuccessfully trying to produce a school policytogether were unaware that one considered technology had very close linkswith science, and physics in particular, whereas his colleague teaching thesame age children saw it in terms of designing, making and evaluating.Teachers’ confusion has become exacerbated since the introduction ofDesign Technology National Curricula in England because the approachof the school design technology curriculum is so different from the waythe term ‘technology’ is used in everyday situations (Jarvis & Rennie,1996a).

Many primary teachers are reluctant to tell their pupils which class-room activities are technology because they are themselves unclear aboutits meaning. Others unknowingly hold perceptions of technology that do notmatch their pupils’ ideas with the resultant impairment of the children’sunderstanding and development. Without guidance, some children do notmake the link between the ‘design and make’ classroom technologicalactivity and the term ‘technology’ because this appears incompatible withthe idea held by many people in society that technology concerns onlymodern hi-tech electrical devices. Consequently many primary school girlsand boys enjoy a whole range of design technology activities but do notappreciate that such activities are actually ‘technology’. Therefore, thesepositive experiences are unable to influence their later subject and careerchoices. Additionally we lose the opportunity of challenging stereotypedviews of what makes a ‘good technologist’ and demonstrating that tech-nology is equally attractive to both boys and girls, which Hendley andLyle (1996) have found to be one of the merits of including technologyin the primary curriculum.

In addition to the problems produced by multiple perceptions of theterm ‘technology’, there is also confusion about the relationship betweenscience and design technology with the risk that children’s learning maybe impaired in both subjects. This has arisen partly because many teachers

262 TINA JARVIS AND LÉONIE J . RENNIE

have little academic background in either subject as both science and tech-nology are relatively new subjects in the primary school. For example, inan interview one teacher considered that technology must include the studyof natural phenomena such as the fox and volcano as they are ‘structuredso that the control of forces is significant in their design.’ Teachers’ lackof understanding of both subjects and their relationship will become evenmore worrying if the growing emphasis on the linkages between scienceand design technology continues. It is important, therefore, to help teachersclarify their concept of technology, distinguish it from science and help themintroduce the term in an appropriate and relevant way in the classroom.

Teachers need to be confident about their view of technology and therequirements of their school technology curriculum. Jones (1997) points outthat without this, teachers’ newly developed broad concepts of technologyand technology education are likely to be fragile and transient in nature,especially when challenged by students’ narrower concepts of technology.It is therefore also valuable for teachers to appreciate pupils’ ideas abouttechnology and how their understanding develops. An exploration of factorsthat foster and inhibit developmental learning of the concept should alsoassist in accelerating learning, since an understanding of these factors wouldhelp in cultivating productive learning conditions. In addition, examiningthe factors that influence children’s understanding of this term may throwvaluable light on how their understanding of other concepts develop. Suchresearch should assist science educationalists, as similar conceptual con-fusion occurs with scientific terms such as ‘animal’, ‘living’, ‘plant’,‘consumer’, ‘producer’ (Bell & Freyberg, 1985), ‘acid’, ‘energy’ and ‘con-servation’ (Sutton, 1992) which have different specialist and common-daymeanings.

A CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF

‘TECHNOLOGY’

Jarvis and Rennie (1996b) reported on the development of a five stage model(Figure 1) describing the development of children’s understanding oftechnology. Their research involved the development and validation of threeinstruments to elicit and describe children’s perceptions about technology.These were a Writing/Drawing Activity designed for children of all ages,a Picture Quiz devised for young children and a Questionnaire for olderchildren (Rennie & Jarvis, 1995a). The use of these instruments in largescale surveys in England and Australia during 1992 and 1993, respec-tively, resulted in a comprehensive description of the nature and variabilityof children’s ideas about technology (Rennie & Jarvis, 1995b).

During 1993, an additional sample of 315 English children in Years 2to 6, from six schools, completed the Writing/Drawing Activity and PictureQuiz. These data were elaborated by in-depth group interviews of a subsetof 81 children designed to probe further their perceptions about tech-

FACTORS INFLUENCING PERCEPTIONS OF TECHNOL 263

nology. The five stage model was then proposed after taking into accountother researchers’ work on the development of the meaning of conceptsand use of language (Rosch, 1978; Howard, 1987; Meadows, 1993). In 1994,the generalizability of the model was tested and verified with new data from900 Year 2–7 Western Australian children. (Jarvis & Rennie, 1996c).

OBJECTIVES AND PROCEDURES

Now that the developmental model had been tested, it was hoped to explorethe factors that might influence individuals’ progress in understandingtechnology. Consequently, the new data from 745 of the Year 2–6 WesternAustralian children, who completed the Writing/Drawing Activity andPicture Quiz, plus interviews from 164 of these children and their teachers,were compared with the 1993 English data to:i) discuss the possible factors that influence the rate and type of devel-

opment of children’s concepts of technology, andii) draw implications for teaching technology and science.

All six English primary schools in the sample were following a nation-ally devised design technology curriculum. The new Australian dataprovided a potentially fascinating contrast as one of the three sampledAustralian schools was a pilot school for the new Western AustralianTechnology and Enterprise Curriculum. At the time the data was collected,this school had only recently included design technology in its curriculum,unlike the English schools which had technology established in their time-tables for several years. In addition, children in the other two Australianschools had been given no specific instruction in technology, althoughscience was included in their curriculum. This provided the opportunityto study children uninfluenced by focused schooling in design technology.

The Writing/Drawing Activity and Picture Quiz were given to 315children in the English schools, 148 children in the Australian Pilot school,and 597 children in the traditional Australian schools (Table I). Three boys


NoModel

EmbryonicIdeas

These ideas are explored

tentatively andunlikely to beimmediatelyestablished.

SingleExplanation

This idea isusually heldconsistently.

MultipleExplanations

These vary instrength ofconviction. As there is no logicalconnectionbetween the

ideas they areinconsistently

applied.

Developmentof a

GeneralisedConcept

➞ ➞ ➞ ➞

Figure 1. Model of concept development for ‘technology’.

and three girls from each class were chosen by their teacher as represen-tative of the ability range in the class. These children were interviewed insingle sex groups. Teachers also completed the instruments and were inter-viewed about their own perceptions of technology and the nature of thetechnology curriculum they followed in their class.

The Writing/Drawing Activity

The Writing/Drawing Activity used the essay topic from the PATT projectwhich reads: Technology can mean different things to different people. Whenyou read the word ‘technology’ what comes into your mind? (Raat & deVries, 1986). To this was added the instruction: Please tell us what tech-nology means to you by writing about it, or by drawing a picture. You mightlike to do both. The essay topic and instruction were printed on a pageand read aloud to the class. The children were given at least 15 minutesto complete the activity. It was made clear that they could write that theydid not know what technology was or draw a question mark if they wished.

The children’s responses to the Writing/Drawing Activity were classifiedand coded according to the 48 identifiable ideas or elements contained ina descriptive framework (Rennie & Jarvis, 1995a). There are ten majorcategories or groups in the framework namely: things which are not tech-nology; art; the concept of change; biotechnology; products; industrialprocesses; constructions; the design process; knowledge as distinct from theapplication of knowledge; and affective reactions to technology and its socialconsequences. Popular ideas, such as computers and electrical devices, weredistinguished by using a second, more detailed level of classification. Thenumber, range and type of ideas seen as technology by the children wereanalysed. In addition to coding the responses according to the classifica-


TABLE INumbers of children completing instruments and involved in interviews

Year* English Schools Australian Traditional Australian Pilot SchoolSchools

Number Number Number Number Number Number completing interviewed completing interviewed completing interviewedinstruments instruments instruments

2 071 18 089 020 022 063 078 15 131 028 028 064 052 16 123 027 032 125 043 15 118 025 030 066 071 17 136 028 036 06

Total 315 81 597 128 148 36

* Year 2 includes children aged 6–7, Year 3 includes children aged 7-8 and so on. Althoughdata were collected from Year 7 classes in Australia, they were not used for this aspect ofthe research.

tion of the descriptive framework, each response to the Writing/DrawingActivity was given a subjective assessment according to the level of under-standing displayed.

Picture Quiz

There are 28 pictures in Picture Quiz based on the descriptive frameworkwhich are intended to represent a wide range of possible ideas about tech-nology, including some that would not be considered technology. Thepictures are labelled and printed on a single page. (The pictures are listedin Figure 2.) The labels were read to the class to clarify understanding. Thenthe children were asked to tick the pictures they thought had somethingto do with technology. A score of 1 was given if the picture was identi-fied as concerning technology, so that children had to choose the picturesas concerning technology. If they could not decide the response was scoredzero. The Picture Quiz took between 5 and 15 minutes to complete andwas always administered after the Writing/Drawing Activity to preventthe pictures influencing the children’s responses to the latter. Children’sresponses to the Picture Quiz were analysed in terms of the total numberof pictures chosen to be representative of technology, and the number oftimes each individual picture was chosen.

Interviews

The interviews were conducted using a technique similar to the ‘inter-view-about-instances’ described by Gilbert, Watts and Osborne (1985) andlasted about 20 minutes. During the interview the children were encouragedto talk about their responses to the Writing/Drawing Activity. They werethen asked to look at their answers on the Picture Quiz and give reasonsfor the items they had chosen and say why they had rejected others. Theywere also questioned about where they had come across the term ‘tech-nology’ and whether they did technology at school. Notes were made ofeach child’s responses and any apparent influence of peers on their answers.In addition, the concepts used to describe technology and their consis-tency of application were categorised and recorded. The number of conceptseach child used and frequency of each category were analysed. The teacherswere also asked to complete the instruments and were interviewed indi-vidually following a similar process.

RESULTS

The results suggest that the children’s conceptual development of ‘tech-nology’ is mainly age-related, but that the rate of development varies withindividuals depending on a number of inter-related factors including homeand school influence, ability, gender and opportunity to discuss ideas.


Underlying age-related conceptual development

Both the English and Australian children’s typical chronological conceptualdevelopment matches the sequence of the five stage model outlined inFigure 1. As shown in Tables III and IV, more of the youngest childrenhad no explanation for technology, an inadequate one, or confused scienceand knowledge with technology. For example, in the Writing/DrawingActivity about half the Australian children under 8 years of age had an incor-rect or no concept of technology. This proportion declines with age althougheven most of the oldest children still had a narrow view as indicated by amean number of only 2.5 discrete ideas given in the Writing/DrawingActivity by the eleven year old children (Table II).

Tables III and IV show that the number and type of concepts used inchildren’s explanation of technology also tend to vary with age. More ofthe younger children, who had some concept of ‘technology’, usually onlyfocused on one simple tangible feature such as a computer or the presenceof wiring or moving parts. Older children appeared to be able to use moreabstract criteria, such as the explanation that technology was about moderninventions.

Older children were also more likely to use several concepts in theirexplanation (Table IV), although these concepts were often applied incon-sistently. For example, one girl used the idea that technology was mainlymaking things such as the jack-in-the-box she had made at school. She chosethe bridge and playground on the Picture Quiz because people had madethem but she could not bring herself to include the jeans and gun whichshe intuitively felt were not technological. She justified their exclusionbecause they did not ‘run on electricity’.

A few of the oldest primary children had begun to link apparently dif-ferent ideas to produce an abstract, inclusive generalisation that showedan appreciation of the diversity of technology, how it satisfies human needsand its significance in the past and future (Tables III and IV). In thesecases the one concept they used was much more comprehensive than thesingle limited idea used by many of the younger children. For example, ayear 6 girl wrote that technology is ‘things that make life comfortable.Things that are needed and then invented, eg cup, computers and bridges.Things that are wanted and needed and done’. She then explained thattechnology was not just machines but could be other things like shelters and


TABLE IIMean number of ideas included in the Writing/Drawing Activity for each age group

Mean number of ideas* Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

English children 0.76 0.82 1.04 1.93 2.49Australian children 0.52 1.01 1.26 2.12 2.71

* These refer to the number of different ideas coded according to the descriptive frame-work.

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TABLE IIIPattern of common concepts of technology used by English and Australian children who were interviewed

Concepts Percentage of number of children using each concept*

Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus

No concept or an embryonic one 28 69 33 38 38 08 07 10 00 09

Equated with science or learning 17 19 07 21 00 08 13 13 00 13

Computer and similar machines 11 00 13 00 13 05 00 06 06 13Electrical devices 28 50 27 26 19 51 33 45 47 41Devices using power 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 03 00 03Mechanical devices 00 44 20 23 13 31 27 35 12 41

Transport 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 00

Modern/inventions/clever devices 00 00 20 03 19 18 20 32 29 38

Useful products 22 06 20 09 31 10 27 16 06 13Uses material such as wood or metal. 00 00 07 06 00 05 00 00 18 03Designed and made by people 00 38 33 09 44 46 53 26 53 28

All designed, man-made items produced for a purpose 00 00 00 00 00 05 00 03 18 17

* Some children used than one concept in their explanation.

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TABLE IVNumber of concepts used in English and Australian children’s explanations of technology

Number of concepts Percentage number of concepts used by each child

Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus Eng Aus

None, embryonic or inappropriate 44 52 34 55 37 10 20 16 00 09One 50 18.5 13 12 13 33 27 23 17 06Two 06 18.5 34 18 31 20 27 26 41 41Three 00 11 13 12 13 20 27 19 12 24Four 06 03 06 07 00 07 12 02Five 00 03 00 02Six 00 02

Attempt at a generalisation 00 08 00 03 12 02

Generalisation 00 02 00 03 06 12

clothing. (Further and more detailed examples of English children’s conceptsof technology and how they vary over age are described by Jarvis andRennie (1996b).)

School influence

Although maturity appears to be a significant factor in children’s abilityto explain the complex concept of technology, other factors inhibited orenhanced conceptual development. Input from well-trained teachers accel-erated children’s ability to provide sophisticated generalised explanations.The content of the curriculum also influenced the type of explanationgiven by the younger children.

Compared to pupils in the Australian pilot school and English schools,more children in the traditional Australian schools, which did not teach tech-nology specifically, did not know what technology was or had an incorrectresponse (Table V). In addition, the only Australian children givingadvanced generalisations came from the pilot school, including one nineyear-old. The responses to the Picture Quiz also show that the pupils fol-lowing a technology curriculum had a far wider view of technology asindicated by their wider choice of items. This is illustrated in Figure 2 whichshows that the numbers of children in the traditional Australian schoolschoosing each item on the Picture Quiz were consistently the lowest, withthe exception of the computer, although the overall pattern of choice wasvery similar in all groups.

The nature of the explanation also varied with more children from thetraditional schools drawing or writing about up-to-date mechanical products


Figure 2. Percentage of children in Years 2–6 choosing each Picture Quiz item.

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English Schools Australian Pilot School Australian Traditional Schools

in the Writing/Drawing Activity (Table V) and focusing their choices onthese items in the Picture Quiz (Figure 2). This indicates that these children’sconcepts were particularly influenced by the common-day perception oftechnology as modern, hi-tech electrical machines. In contrast the expla-nations for technology from children following a technology curriculumin both England and Australia had an emphasis on testing and model makingwhich reflects the nature of their National and State Curricula (Table V).Similar differences between schools with and without structured technologyprogrammes have been identified in other studies (Rennie & Jarvis, 1995b;Thomson & Householder, 1995)

Considering that the Australian pilot school had been designated forthe pilot scheme for only a year and had been using a design technologyapproach in a few classes during the previous two years, the differencebetween these children’s ideas and those of pupils in the adjoining tradi-tional schools indicates a relatively rapid and powerful effect of an imposedcurriculum. Indeed the pilot children’s ideas that technology is about design


TABLE VCategories of responses given by over 4% of Years 2–6 children who completed* the

Writing/Drawing Activity in schools with different technology curricula

Categories of responses Percentage of each school groupBased on descriptive framework (Jarvis and Rennie 1995a)* English Australian Australian

children pilot school traditional schoolsn = 215 n = 122 n = 346

Learning/scienceEquated with science 07 07 24Acquiring learning 06 06 09

MachineryComputers 39 10 32Electrical 19 06 43General machines 11 07 27Transport 12 12 21

Modern productsModern up-to-date 04 04 19Futuristic 02 02 07

Design and makingInventing 06 29 13Testing and developing ideas 08 37 05Making models 33 62 01

Other common responsesSecondary industry 08 12 08Structures 08 07 03

* Children who wrote that they did not know what technology was, provided blank or unmean-ingful responses are excluded. The affective categories from the descriptive framework areomitted. In addition to the figures in the table, 6% of the English children also identifiedArt, and 4% considered textiles to be aspects of technology whereas these were almostunmentioned by Australian children.

and make was even more marked than in the English schools, which wasprobably due to more teacher in-service training. The teachers from the pilotschool had a clear view of technology as design, make and appraise withthe planning design phase seen as essential even in the Year 2 class. Theteachers’ understanding had come from recent substantial in-service trainingat the school. As one teacher said

I was introduced to technology last year . . . I didn’t even know technology existed in[primary] schools before then . . . and technology at that stage to me meant workingwith computers. And that’s all I assumed technology was going to be – the setting upof computer rooms and the children working with computers.

The ability of the pilot children to associate the term ‘technology’ withtheir activities was additionally enhanced by all the teachers in the pilotschool using the term appropriately in the classroom. This also appearedto help the children distinguish between science and technology (TableV). In contrast, nearly a quarter of the children of all ages from the tradi-tional Australian schools, who completed the Writing/Drawing Activity,confused technology with science. This appears partly related to the factthat some of the teachers in the traditional schools were themselves confusedabout the distinction between science and technology. As one of the teacherssaid

I know that there is a curriculum area concerned with technology. And it’s associated withthe science area, so I think that is why I think of it as being a science . . . .

The confusion between science and technology was particularly notice-able where the teachers also had problems with understanding science.For example, one teacher suggested that as technology involved machinesand things that work or things that are combined to enable something towork, cough medicine was technology as it was made by combining chem-icals. When completing the Picture Quiz, she also chose the axe, astechnology because it too was made by combining materials, ie stone andwood; and as the volcano was like a chemical eruption she felt that thiswas also technology.

This general confusion between the science and technology indicatesthe importance of providing sufficient in-service training for teachers. Itis also interesting to note the rapid effect on the children’s developmentof a change of curriculum supported by in-depth training.

Home and out of school experiences

During the interviews the children were encouraged to talk about where theyhad heard the term technology. None of the children at the two Australianschools where technology was not included in the curriculum said theyhad heard the word in the school context, although two had heard it inrelation to an after-school course for able children. In the pilot school thechildren also reported they had heard the word occasionally on televisionand from their parents but they felt the most important influence was theschool.


In a few cases it was obvious that the parents’ work was a stronginfluence particularly if the parents were electricians, draughtsmen orarchitects, or used computers at work. In these cases the child’s descrip-tion of technology was often closely related to the type of activity the parentdid, as in the case of a Year 5 girl who focused on designs and plans as away of explaining technology, drawing on her experience of making a roleplay house at home with her architect father. Other children had devel-oped their ideas of technology on overheard casual comments, as did thegirl who commented she knew technology was about computers becauseher father said that he now had better computer technology at work.

A few children said that they based their ideas about technology onadvertisements and television programmes, with a programme whichincluded ‘hi-tech challenges’ being specifically mentioned. Hearing the samename applied to various stimuli is the usual way children make sense ofunfamiliar words. As Skemp (1979) found, acquiring such concepts fromexemplars alone was very slow and cumbersome because words like ‘tech-nology’ are encountered infrequently with irrelevant data being present atthe same time. Coupled with the absence of someone with enough knowl-edge to engage in useful discussion, the children often made very limitedor inappropriate connections.

Gender differences

There were minor gender differences, which were more noticeable in theAustralian sample. They mainly appear to reflect differences in confidencein answering questions or differences in early home experiences.

In order to gauge the children’s level of understanding, the responsesto the Writing/Drawing Activity were assessed by scoring different typesof answers. A score of zero was given if the child had no understandingof technology or the response was incorrect. A very limited understanding(a single idea) scored one, some understanding (two or three discrete ideas)was given a score of two, a good understanding (an appreciation of a widerange of goods or a sense of history or an understanding of the designcycle or an awareness of the social implications of technology etc.) scored3 and finally a very good understanding scored four.

Table VI shows the number of boys and girls who did not attempt theWriting/Drawing Activity as well as the quality of the responses of thecompleted papers. Far more of the youngest Australian girls, compared toboys, were not prepared to attempt the task or had an incorrect view oftechnology. However, once they have developed an idea about technology,the differences are insignificant. Girls’ early limited concept of technologymay be because many of their ideas were based on knowledge gleaned fromtheir home environments, rather than school, where boys are more involvedin making activities and playing with hi-tech products such as robots andcomputers (Johnson & Murphy, 1986; Browne, 1991; Underwood, 1994).Another possibility is that more girls lacked confidence in committingtheir views to paper.


The Writing/Drawing Activity also indicated some difference betweenthe types of responses between the girls and boys. Noticeably more girlsin all year groups described technology as model making and more girlsin all but one year group (Year 3) described it as testing and developingideas or related to secondary industry. On the other hand, more boys in eachage group referred to some sort of transport as technology.

Ability of children

Data were collected about the ability of the Australian children who wereinterviewed. They indicate there is a relationship between the children’sability and their level of understanding of the term ‘technology’ particularlywhen there has been no formal teaching of the subject (Table VII). Far moreless able children, as identified by their teachers in the traditional schools,had no idea of what technology was, had an incorrect idea or had limitedidea. Generally the less able in both types of school had a narrower conceptof technology as indicated by the number of ideas they gave to explain tech-nology. However, unlike the traditional schools, there were cases of children,identified as less able, giving sophisticated generalisations in the pilot school


TABLE VILevel of understanding of technology between Australian boys and girls as shown in all

the Writing/Drawing Activities

Percentage of children in each year group

Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 n = 111 n = 159 n = 155 n = 148 n = 172

BOYS n = 57 n = 82 n = 74 n = 64 n = 87

Not attempting W/D Activity 47 35 28 20 24

Levels of understanding on the W/D Activity

No understanding 16 14 11 05 02Limited understanding 30 34 38 37 22Some understanding 07 12 20 29 36Good understanding 00 05 03 08 15Very good understanding 00 00 00 00 01

GIRLS n = 54 n = 77 n = 81 n = 84 n = 85

Not attempting W/D Activity 81 57 43 20 18

Levels of understanding on the W/D Activity

No understanding 02 14 11 18 12Limited understanding 11 20 30 38 25Some understanding 04 06 16 18 22Good understanding 02 03 00 05 16Very good understanding 00 00 00 02 07

(Table VII), again indicating the importance of focused teaching in tech-nology.

Opportunity to articulate and discuss ideas

When individuals recognise contradictions between their own beliefs andwhat the world is telling them, they are motivated to question their ownideas, to reassess old conceptions and to construct new ones that have abetter fit with the new information (Wittrock, 1994). This process wasnoticeable during the interviews, as many children reviewed conflicting bitsof evidence in an attempt to make logical connections between apparentlydisparate ideas that they had not associated before. For example, a Year 5girl had heard the term ‘research and technology’ on television in the contextof new medicines and examining dinosaur bones, so had developed theidea that technology involved mixing chemicals so they don’t explode,finding viruses and helping to find bones. Completing the Picture Quizprompted her to extend her concept of technology to include machines.When asked to justify her choice of the factory on the Picture Quiz, sheapparently attempted to reconcile her concept of research/testing with thenew idea of technology as machines, by explaining that she had chosenthe factory because it had different machines to test out new kinds of biscuitsor different ingredients.

As suggested by research based on the work of Piaget, Vygotsky andSullivan (Damon, 1984), peer interaction, as well as discussions with adultsis important in promoting conceptual development. There were two typesof such interaction during some of the group interviews. Some groups talkedas equals, articulating, sharing and extending ideas, whereas in others


TABLE VIILevel of understanding of technology of Australian children with differing abilities who

were interviewed

Number of concepts used Traditional schools Pilot Schooln = 128 n = 36

Able Middle Low Able Middle Low n = 42 n = 44 n = 42 n = 12 n = 12 n = 12

None, embryonic or inappropriate 07 13 21 0 1 2

One 07 07 10 0 2 5Two 13 12 08 1 6 1Three 08 09 03 5 1 2Four 02 02 00 1 1 0Five 02 00 00 0 0 0Six 00 01 00 0 0 0

Attempt at a generalisation 03 00 00 2 0 0

Generalisation 3 1 2

more articulate, confident children acted as ‘tutors’ and caused their peersto rethink their ideas completely.

One group of Year 4 boys used the discussion during the interviews tobounce ideas off each other in order to clarify and extend their own ideas.One wrote before the interview ‘I think technology is machinery and motorsand how things work, like how cars work’. During the interview the grouptalked about electricity and this view of technology was incorporated inhis idea so that at the end of the interview he said ‘Technology has gotmachines and electricity to make it run’. On the other hand before theinterview, one of the other boys in the same group wrote ‘Technology meansto invent or find new things or make a new thing like a different science’.Group discussion about the platypus and gum tree enabled this child toadd the idea that technological products were made by humans. In hisfinal summary he explained his extended concept as ‘new break throughs,new things made by people not animals’. In each case the children widenedtheir existing ideas rather than taking on another child’s concept.

In other groups, children who confessed they did not know what tech-nology was, looked to their peers for information. Similarly the morereserved and less able children were influenced by their more confidentpeers. This was not always advantageous when the dominant children heldan erroneous or more limited idea than others in the group. In one casean able child with a forceful personality, who had the strongly held idea thattechnology was only to do with old things, converted a child who felt thattechnology included electrical items. In another group of Year 3 boys, onechild hesitantly suggested that he had chosen items on the Picture Quizbecause they were man-made but gained no response from his peers sostarted to suggest technology was about electricity which was the ideaheld by the others. In another case, a low ability Year 4 child appeared tohave the idea of electricity at the beginning which was reinforced by theothers in the group having the same idea.

Encouragement of guided peer-based discussion of technology can assistthe children’s understanding. Such activities should also help children towrestle with intellectual challenges and difficult new principles in general(Damon, 1984). However teachers need advice and training on how toorganise effectively and work with cooperative groups of young childrenso that all children can present and evaluate their ideas.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

The pattern of conceptual development in the two countries is similar, butthe type of concepts held by individuals, particularly in the early and middlestages, are curriculum or context dependent. Individual children’s rate ofdevelopment also appears to depend on various factors including homeexperience, ability and their opportunity to discuss ideas with adults andpeers.


The value of a specific curriculum provision in technology is signifi-cant in accelerating, changing and extending the perceptions of all children.It is particularly significant for the less able who have a greater need forsupport to clarify, interpret and relate experiences. The effect of introducinga new curriculum can occur quickly, as indicated by the marked differ-ence in the Australian pilot school after only two or three years of includingDesign Technology into their curriculum. However to be beneficial, cur-riculum change needs to be based on adequate in-service training of teachers.

The Design Technology National Curricula in Australia and Englandpromote the view that design and technology capability requires pupils tocombine their designing and making skills with knowledge and under-standing, in order to design and make products. Consequently in thesecountries it is important that teachers receive in-service training to help themrecognise that their everyday view of technology as modern hi-tech elec-trical devices is part of the wider view that includes all man-made products.This should help them, and their pupils, to reconcile the apparent mismatchof society’s view and the curriculum approach. A more coherent under-standing of technology should also be facilitated by helping teachers, andtherefore their pupils, relate children’s model-making in the classroom tothe invention, design and production of all past and contemporary manu-factured products.

Activities using the type of instruments described in this paper can helpboth children and teachers to talk about technology and clarify their ideas(Rennie & Jarvis, 1994). Such discussions need to probe children’s ideascarefully, as apparent superficial understanding can mask underlying ideaswhich are logical to the child but would be considered incorrect by thetechnologist. In addition the use of the term ‘technology’ correctly in theclassroom appears to assist children to develop an accurate understandingof the term, although it is inadequate to rely on children making effectivesense of the term through casual everyday use alone. This research alsoindicates the value of cooperative groups to assist conceptual develop-ment. Consequently pedagogical advice and training for teachers needs tobe provided alongside training about the content of new curriculum devel-opment.

Technological activities can provide contexts for introducing scienceconcepts and demonstrating that science is relevant and socially impor-tant. In addition, as long as the teacher is explicit about the science skillsand concepts to be developed, design and make projects can enable childrento apply their science knowledge, help to establish understanding andprovide assessment opportunities for the teacher. However, unless teachersare clear about differences between science and technology, both subjectsare likely to suffer.

Driver, Leach, Millar and Scott (1996, p. 49) point out that many peopleerroneously see science ‘in an instrumental way, as a means of improvingthe human condition, finding cures for diseases and inventing new devices’,and in general have ‘a lack of differentiation between science and tech-


nology’. They argue that it is important for the successful learning of sciencefor students to understand that it is centrally concerned with developingexplanations. Therefore teachers need to understand that while science isexplaining the real world by making generalisations, technology is con-cerned with changing it to create unique solutions to solve human problemsand needs. Although both disciplines use similar skills for testing, thepurpose of the investigations is different. In science these skills are usedto make a generalisation, whereas in technology they are intended for testinghow successful a product is or to decide what production technique andmaterial to use. In addition, although technology uses a similar methodologyand applies science concepts in the design and make process, economic,aesthetic, geographical and other factors also have to be applied. Therefore,if technology is only perceived to be the application of science the childrenwill have too narrow an experience and view of technology.

Out of school activities can also be influential in introducing technologyto children, as long as the term is used accurately. Consequently, pro-viding information for parents and material for out of school activitiescan be beneficial. This has already been shown of value to support sciencelearning. For example, Fleer (1996) found that providing newsletters andhome-based follow up activities to an early childhood programme helpedto extend parents’ perceptions of science. She found that the parents recog-nised the everyday nature of science as well as facilitating transference,consolidation and clarification of the children’s ideas during the teachingand learning programme. Similarly anecdotal evidence indicates thatparents’ and children’s understanding of design technology was assistedin a Leicestershire primary school by providing activity packs for home use,which were focused on explaining the place of technology in the homeand school curriculum.

Improved parent and teacher perceptions of both science and technologyshould assist in more people understanding the relationship between edu-cationalists’ and society’s view of technology. This should facilitate effectivecommunication between business and schools. In addition mismatches ofunderstanding between children and their teachers should be reduced withthe effect that children’s learning is enhanced and related to their lateradult occupation.

REFERENCES

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factors that influence children's developing perceptions of technology

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