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Background: Authenticity in schools has been highlighted asimportant for improving students’ engagement and learning, andto prepare them for future job markets, especially in science andtechnology.Purpose: This study investigates students’ perceived authenticityof a developed innovation project when implemented in an uppersecondary technology education program.Sample: Three cohorts of students (n = 199) attended a first-yeartechnology course at a Swedish upper secondary school in 2016,2017 and 2018, respectively. In addition, eleven students from the2016 cohort were interviewed two years later to obtain their viewson how the innovation project in the first-year course influencedtheir performance in a subsequent advanced technology coursetaken in 2017–2018.Design and Methods: Groups of students participated in the firstphase of an innovation project in the first-year course, a five-weekmodule, cooperatively designing solutions to real-world problems.A Likert scale questionnaire measured the degree of perceivedauthenticity in line with Herrington, Reeves and Oliver’s (2010)key elements. Focus group interviews were conducted afterthe second phase – a 20-week follow-up module in the subsequentadvanced course – about how authentic they perceived the firstand second phases to be.Results: A questionnaire measured the degree of perceivedauthenticity of the students for the first phase, for each of thethree years. Coaching and scaffolding received the highest ratingsacross all three years, whereas Reflection was perceived as havingthe lowest authenticity. In a qualitative component of the studystudents found both phases positive, and five new themes ofstudents’ perception of their experiences were revealed.Conclusions: The similarities in perceived authenticity between thethree cohorts suggest consistency in students’ perceptions ofauthenticity. However, they did not feel that the project gavethem the opportunity to reflect on their learning. According tointerviews conducted two years later, they perceived their experiencesof the innovation project as having induced creativity, commitment,ownership, motivation, and real-world connection,although at times it was also a challenge to think for themselvesand to collaborate with others.KEYWORDSStudent perceptions;authentic learning;innovation; technologyeducation; high schoolCONTACT

When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses on how the affective, cognitive and behavioral attitudinal components of technology education can be incorporated using a two-step survey: the traditional PATT-questionnaire (PATT-SQSE) and the recently developed Mitcham Score questionnaire. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship among the cognitive, affective and potential behavioural components of students’ attitudes toward technology in a Swedish context, using the PATT-SQ-SE instrument including the Mitcham score open items. Results of the analyses show that relationships among the attitudinal components are observable. The results also imply that relationships among the attitudinal components are different for girls than boys. A key factor for the participating students’ attitudinal relations was interest (affective component) in technology education. An individual interest in technology education was related to both the cognitive component and behavioral intention. Another key relationship, for girls, was that the cognitive component had a strong relationship with behavioral intention, which was not the case for boys. Based on the observed relations between the cognitive, affective and behavioural components we have identified two key implications for educational practice: Girls should learn a broader conception of technology in technology education, if we want them to pursue technology-related careers to a higher degree; Students’ interest in technology should be stimulated through engaging tasks in technology education.

There is not one single global version of technology education; curricula and standards have different forms and content. This sometimes leads to difficulties in discussing and comparing technology education internationally. Existing philosophical frameworks of technological knowledge have not been used to any great extent in technology education. In response, the aim of this article is to construct a heuristic framework for technology education, based on professional and academic technological knowledge traditions. We present this framework as an epistemological tripod of technology education with mutually supporting legs. We discuss how this tripod relates to a selection of epistemological views within the philosophy of technology. Furthermore, we apply the framework to the Swedish and English technology curricula, to demonstrate its utility as an analytic tool when discerning differences between national curricula. Each leg of the tripod represents one category of technological knowledge: (1) technical skills, (2) technological scientific knowledge and (3) socio-ethical technical understanding. The heuristic framework is a conceptual model intended for use in discussing, describing, and comparing curriculum components and technology education in general, and potentially also as support for planning and conducting technology teaching. It may facilitate common understanding of technology education between different countries and technology education traditions. Furthermore, it is a potentially powerful tool for concretising the components of technological literacy.

From a philosophical viewpoint, technological design is about connecting what is desirable with what is technically possible. Technology itself plays a major role in design processes, not only because technology development is what designing is all about, but also since the existing technology at any given point in time frames what is possible to achieve in terms of new outcomes. A limiting role of technology in design, education and other societal activities goes under the concept of technological determinism and has arguably been one of the most significant points of debate in the social sciences in the last decades. The aim of this article is to investigate how philosophical, sociological and historical research, as well as design and innovation research about technological determinism, could be fruitfully reconsidered in technology education. The analysis yielded three novel findings about the nature of technological determinism. First of all, technological determinism can take the form of an idea, theory or a way of explaining technology development in history or the present, but it can also take the form of actual material structures that—implicitly or explicitly—permeate and influence society, or, at least, this is what some researchers claim. Secondly, technological determinism is not just something that is the result of a bird’s eye view of technology and society or when we study technology as part of the macro level of society. Determinism can appear on all levels, even the micro level. Thirdly, like its counterpart social/societal determinism, technological determinism is not necessarily a “bad”thing, but a natural result of design being a balance between what is societally desirable and technically possible. The most critical issue from the point of view of technological literacy is to promote the idea that it is humans that design and retain control over technology. Funding agencies:Open access funding provided by Linkoping University.

Feedback mechanisms make control of systems automatic and are thus inherent features of many technologies that surround us in our daily lives. Feedback is thus considered important to learn in technology education, although it is regarded as difficult and often not introduced to students until upper secondary level. Given the central role of feedback in technology and engineering it is surprising that there is virtually no research on how students of any age conceive of and/or learn about feedback in the technology and engineering education literature. The aim of this paper is to report on and evaluate an intervention to improve Swedish secondary pre-service technology student teachers’ conceptions of feedback in technological systems. Five student teachers took part in the intervention, taking a pre-test prior to, and a post-test after, this intervention. Although this is a small sample, the findings indicate that the student group as a whole performed better in the post-test than in the pre-test. The findings also suggest that some teachers understood the systemic, macro aspects of feedback mechanisms better after the intervention. On the other hand, no student reached an expanded understanding, and most conceptions were rather vague. Furthermore, there was a general lack of atomistic conceptions, relating to a micro understanding, for example, sensors and how they work in a control system. This study thus confirms previous research about the lack of essential device knowledge among student teachers. Some implications for the continuation of the study are suggested based on these findings.

Technological systems are interwoven into the very fabric of modern society to such an extent that we often take them for granted and they almost become invisible to us, because much of the infrastructure is hidden in the ground beneath us or behind walls. Many modern technological systems are also abstract in the sense that they include invisible connections and flows, for example, in cellular phone communications or GPS navigation. These systems also have societal components such as organizations, legislation and operators. Technological systems thus challenge traditional teaching and learning related to artefacts in technology education, since systems are much more difficult to grasp and also have some different characteristics and dynamics compared to single objects. The aim of this chapter is to address this challenge by presenting and discussing the characteristics of technological systems in relation to teaching and learning about systemic aspects of our lifeworld. We suggest four pedagogies to achieve this: interface pedagogy, holistic pedagogy, historical pedagogy and design pedagogy. Furthermore, we propose two ways of delimiting systems through two types of boundaries that are crucial in this regard: the systems horizon and the system border.

Educational research on attitudes shows that both teaching and student learningare affected by the attitudes of the teacher. The aim of this study is to examine technologyteachers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards teaching technology in Swedish compulsoryschools, focusing on teachers’ perceived control. The following research question is posed:How do the teachers perceive self-efficacy and context dependency in teaching technology?Qualitative interviews were performed with 10 technology teachers in the compulsoryschool (ages 7–16), and the data was analysed using thematic analysis. Based on an attitudeframework, three sub-themes of self-efficacy were found: experience, education andinterest, subject knowledge, and preparation. Furthermore, four sub-themes of contextdependency were found; collegial support, syllabus, resources and status. The results showthat, according to the teachers in this study, self-efficacy mainly comes from experience,education and interest. Moreover, contextual factors can both limit and boost the teachers,but overall there are negative attitudes because of a lack of support and resources, whichimpedes the teaching. Teachers educated in technology education generally express morepositive attitudes and thus seem to have advantages in relation to technology teaching, butstill they sometimes express negative attitudes in the field of perceived control. Someimplications of this study are that it is necessary to promote teacher education in technologyand to reserve resources for technology education in schools, thereby supportingteachers in controlling contextual and internal factors that affect their teaching. Thissupport to teachers is especially important if there is an intention for the subject to developin new directions.

The pupils’ attitudes toward technology survey (PATT) has been used for 30 years and is still used by researchers. Since it was first developed, the validity of the questionnaire constructs has primarily been discussed from a statistical point of view, while few researchers have discussed the type of attitudes and interest that the questionnaire measures. The purpose of this study is to increase the knowledge about student interpretations and the meaning of their answers in the recently developed PATT short questionnaire (PATT-SQ). To research this, a mixed methods approach was used, where the qualitative data from six interviewees (students aged 14) help to explain and interpret the quantitative data from 173 respondents (students aged 12–15). The interviewed students completed a Swedish version of the PATT-SQ 3 weeks prior a semistructured interview. The results from this study imply that the PATT-SQ survey can be used mostly as it is, but this study also shows that there are some categories that require some caution when being analyzed and discussed. For example, the gender category cannot be used as intended since it does not measure what it is supposed to and it might be gender-biased. The interest category can advantageously be reduced to four items to focus on school technology, which will indicate how deep a student’s well-developed individual interest is. And the career category seems to only detect students’ who urge a career in technology, while the other students lack knowledge about what that career might be and therefore they are not interested in such a career.

Recent studies on the Swedish work force show that about half of all jobs demand a high degree of self-governing. In preparing students for the future, the World Economic Forum suggests that schools should also teach social skills, creativity and critical thinking. According to the Swedish upper secondary curriculum, the subject of technology should allow students to develop entrepreneurial skills, defined as supporting curiosity, confidence, creativity and courage, resulting in the ability to act, in innovation and problem solving. This vision is related to the notion of authentic learning. Reeves, Herrington and Oliver define authenticity through nine key elements, namely, authentic context, authentic task, presence of expert performances, multiple perspectives, collaboration, reflection, articulation, metacognitive support and authentic assessment. The aim of this study is to map these key elements of authentic learning onto the development and design of a five-week innovation project for implementation in a Swedish upper secondary school context. The mapping process involved first synthesising literature in the area of authentic learning in conjunction with studying Swedish technology education curriculum materials. This was followed by describing the characteristics of each key element of authentic learning in terms of proposing activities for implementation as an innovation project (IP). The results of this study show how criteria of nine elements of authentic learning could be used in designing an innovation project (IP) module in an authentically cogent way. Thus the authenticity framework served as a valid theoretical tool to produce the authentic learning module.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between technology education and educational sloyd (slojd) in Sweden from the early 1960s until today. It is concluded that the technology ...

Background: From previous research among science teachers itis known that teachers’ attitudes to their subjects affect important aspects of their teaching, including their confidence and the amount of time they spend teaching the subject. In contrast, less is known about technology teachers’ attitudes. Purpose: Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate Swedish technology teachers’ attitudes toward their subject, and how these attitudes may be related to background variables. Sample: Technology teachers in Swedish compulsory schools(n = 1153) responded to a questionnaire about teachers’ attitudes,experiences, and background. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate attitude dimensions of the questionnaire. Groupings of teachers based on attitudes were identified through cluster analysis, and multinomial logistic regression was performed to investigate the role of teachers’ background variables as predictors for cluster belonging. Results: Four attitudinal dimensions were identified in the questionnaire, corresponding to distinct components of attitudes.Three teacher clusters were identified among the respondents characterized by positive, negative, and mixed attitudes toward the subject of technology and its teaching, respectively. The most influential predictors of cluster membership were to be qualified for teaching technology, having participated in in-service-training, teaching at a school with a proper overall teaching plan for the subject of technology and teaching at a school with a defined number of teaching hours for the subject. Conclusions: The results suggest that efforts to increase technology teachers’ qualifications and establishing a fixed number of teaching hours and an overall teaching plan for the subject of technology may yield more positive attitudes among teachers toward technology teaching. In turn, this could improve the status of the subject as well as students’ learning.

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.

In the new Swedish curriculum for the preschool (2010) technology education is emphasized as one of the most significant pedagogical areas to work with. The aim of this article is to investigate how girls and boys explore and learn technology as well as how their teachers frame this in free play in two Swedish preschools. The study is inspired by an ethnographic approach and is based on qualitative data collected through video-taped observations and informal talk with children and teachers in two preschools. It is concluded that girls and boys learn to approach and handle technology differently, thereby confirming rather than dissolving gender boundaries. The girls more often have a special purpose in building something they need in their play, that is, they mostly engage in technological construction as a sideline. The boys, on the other hand, more often award technological construction a central part in their play; building is an end in itself. Teachers are not so active in supporting free play involving technology among the older children, nor in giving boys and girls equal opportunities to explore and use material and toys which are not gender-stereotyped. One important implication is that in-service education needs to address not only experiments and construction but also gender issues and how teachers can create equal opportunities for boys and girls in the free play.

The present work is the result of a reversed modeling, aimed at finding the best average friction factor on the tool/workpiece interface when simulating forging with the commercial FE code FORM2D. A vital restriction of FORM2D is its inability to distribute more than one friction factor for each tool. The studied process is the five-step counterblow hammer forging of pinions. Analyses are restricted to workpiece geometries, filling of the upper die and how the filling varies with friction. It is concluded that the most realistic filling of the upper die is obtained when maximum friction is applied to the lower die and a friction factor of roughly 0.2 to the upper die.

Two wear models are compared. The first model constitutes the classical model which assumes that wear is proportional to die pressure and sliding length, while the second model assumes that wear is proportional to the energy dissipated on the tool/workpiece contact interface. The models are applied to the counter-blow hammer forging of a pinion. The upper die cavity is furnished with a bottleneck. Five blows are needed for forging the component. The process is analysed by full-scale experiments and a commercial FE-code, FORM2D. In order to evaluate the two models for different positions of the upper cavity, each blow is divided into a number of incremental time steps. For each of them, the sliding velocity, the contact pressure and the contact shear stress is determined. In this way it is possible to predict which part of the upper die is exposed to the most serious conditions. Both models show satisfactory agreement with the results of full-scale experiments. However, the model based on energy dissipation indicates the location of the wear-sensitive parts of the tool more distinctively.

Today, technology education in Sweden is both a high-status and a low-status phenomenon. Positive values such as economic growth, global competitiveness and the sustainability of the welfare state are often coupled with higher engineering education and sometimes even upper secondary education. Negative values, on the other hand, are often associated with primary and lower secondary education in this subject. Within the realm of technology education at such lower levels of schooling in Sweden, different actors have often called for reformed curricula or better teacher training, owing to the allegedly poor state of technology education in schools. Recurring demands for a change in technology education are nothing unique from an historical point of view, however. In fact, the urge to influence teaching and learning in technology is much older than the school subject itself. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse some key patterns in technology education in Swedish elementary and compulsory schools from 1842 to 2010. This study thus deals with how technological content has developed over time in these school forms as well as how different actors in and outside the school have dealt with the broader societal view of what is considered as important knowledge in technology as well as what kind of technology has particular significance. The long period of investigation from 1842 to 2010 as well as a double focus on technology as scattered educational content and a subject called Technology make it possible to identify recurring patterns, which we have divided into three overarching themes: Technological literacy and the democratic potential of technological knowledge, The relationship between school technology and higher forms of technology education and The relationship between technology and science. Skolan som arena för kunskapsbildning i teknik - samhällets behov och skolans möjligheter

Children's fiction in school libraries have played and still play a role in mediating representations of technology and attitudes towards technology to schoolchildren. In early 20th century Sweden, elementary education, including textbooks and literature that were used in teaching, accounted for the main mediation of technological knowledge to schoolchildren. An investigation of children's literature for schools is therefore important in order to understand what was considered worth knowing about technology at the time. The aim of this article is therefore to analyse the representations of technology and attitudes towards technology that were mediated through two children's fiction books in Swedish elementary school libraries in the 1910s. We have limited the analysis of empirical material to the books Technical Stories for Young and Old (Tekniska sagor for stora och smAyen, 1914) and Technical Stories of the War for Young and Old (Krigets tekniska sagor for stora och smAyen, 1915) by the Swedish inventor, author and technology educator Otto Witt. Gauging Witt's influence on the schoolchildren and educators of his time is very difficult, but in this first English-language article on his "technical stories" one can conclude that he was in many ways unique and probably fairly well-read in the schools of early 20th century Sweden and onward. He was also a particularly perceptive forerunner of today's technology and science educators in his use of anthropomorphism as an educational tool.

The history of technology can play an important role in illuminating the fundamentals of technological change, but it is important that technology teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and researchers can be provided with good analytical tools for this purpose. In this article, we propose a model of techno-historical interplay, as a help in deciding what historical artefacts and systems should be included in technology curricula and teaching as well as in analyzing and conveying to students the fundamental issues of technological change. We want to emphasize particularly three points of importance in employing the model as a tool of analysis. First of all, it is crucial to decide what one wants the technologically literate student to know about technology and technological change. This should include an awareness of the historical and geographical contingency of any technology. Second, on the basis of this decision one should adapt the model as a tool for selecting relevant technologies. Third, the model should be applied as an instrument of analysis of the history of the selected technological artefacts or systems as well as theories of technological development. The final publication is available at www.springerlink.com:Jonas Hallström and Per Gyberg, Technology in the rear-view mirror: How to better incorporate the history of technology into technology education, 2011, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, (21), 1, 3-17.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10798-009-9109-5Copyright: Springerhttp://www.springerlink.com/

Being a fairly young school subject, technology education has yet to attain a firm position in the curriculum. Therefore, there is a need for a retrospective look at earlier developments in order to understand why and how the current position was achieved (cf. Karlsson, 2004). David Layton suggests that the subject of technology in the school has developed by balancing “a range of competing influences”, and that a number of “stakeholders” have been and still are important for its evolution (Layton, 1994, p. 13).

The aim of this article is to identify a technical domain of knowledge in the curriculum of the Swedish elementary school and views on elementary school technology of two interest groups – school teachers and engineers. Gradually during the early to mid-1920s there was increased technical content in the Swedish elementary school, if we look at the new curriculum, in-service education and stakeholders’ views. The main reasons for this were, first of all, that the first decades of the twentieth century witnessed industrial growth with accompanying technification of large parts of society including the school. Second, the curriculum of 1919 had a broader technical content than earlier curricula, and thus mirrored the societal changes. Third, vocational secondary schools led to new requirements in respect of elementary technology education. Representatives of the Government were prime movers in enhancing the significance of technology in school together with teachers, while engineers generally showed little interest. Skolan som arena för kunskapsbildning i teknik