Technology education internationally has for some time struggled to achieve continuity between what is depicted in policy and curricular documents and the reality of day-to-day practices. With its focus often articulated through the nature of activity students are to engage with, technology teachers are recognised as having significant autonomy in the design and implementation of their practices. From this, it is important to understand teachers’ beliefs about technology education, as their conceptions of the subject will inform practice. As such, this study sought to investigate teachers’ conceptions of the purpose of teaching technology through reflection on their enacted practices. A constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed for the design of the study and analysis of data. According to our analysis, despite similarities between the nature of student activity that teachers designed and implemented, teachers represented the purpose of the subject in different ways. Three different conceptions of the purpose of teaching technology were identified; obtaining knowledge and skills for application, ability to act in a technological way, and ability to think in a technological way. Central to the three conceptions were contentions in the representations of what constituted subject matter knowledge in the subject, and the role that different application cases played in teaching technology. Without consideration and explicit articulation of the purposes for teaching technology, this lack of clarity and differences in rationale for teaching technology are likely to continue.

Design is core element of general technology education internationally. While there is a degree of contention with regards to its treatment, there is general consensus that the inclusion of design in some form is important, if not characteristic, of the subject area. Acknowledging that design is important, there are many questions which need to be considered in order to guide policy and practice, such as whether a singular general design ability can be explicitly defined empirically beyond an implicit verbal definition, and whether it can be taught and assessed. In order to address these questions in a systematic fashion, a framework is needed in order to guide relevant investigations. Having such a framework would allow for theory to be generated, hypotheses to be tested, and assumptions to be challenged. In response to this apparent need, this article presents a theoretical discussion pertaining to the constructive alignment of learning to design, wherein theories of knowledge, variation theory, knowledge transfer, and assessment validity and reliability are reflected upon.

The thesis focuses on the relationship between international rhetoric and classroom realities in technology education. For some time there has been widespread recognition that the intended goals for learning in the subject area have failed to manifest in enacted practices as envisioned. As the intermediary between rhetoric and reality, the technology teachers and ways of understanding their enacted practices are the focus of this work.

The thesis is based on four research articles which adopt theoretical and empirical approaches to investigating the technology teacher as mediator of enacted practice. In Article I, technology education in the Irish national context is investigated through technology teachers’ reflections on enacted practice. In response to a variety of situational- and systemic- factors which impede classroom practice being identified, Article II and III theorise approaches to investigating enacted practice in technology. In acknowledging the epistemological basis of technology as depicted in the extant literature, a reconceptualisation of how to utilise pedagogical content knowledge research in explaining enacted practice is put forward. Article IV returns to the technology teacher in a transnational context, whereby teachers from the Republic of Ireland, Sweden and New Zealand are interviewed in constructing a grounded theory of teachers’ purposes for teaching technology.

The contributions of the research are twofold. Firstly, following the identification of evidence to support the existence of rhetoric-reality tensions in technology education, an ecologically situated framework of enacted practice is put forward. The framework acknowledges how subject matter is treated in technology education in striving for more comprehensive ways of investigating enacted practice. Secondly, in taking a preliminary step toward understanding enacted practices, a grounded theory of teachers’ purposes for teaching technology is put forward. This grounded theory offers a unified model for articulating the purposes of teaching technology that prevail in classroom realities today.

Den här avhandlingen handlar om hur diskursen iteknikundervisning förhåller sig till den undervisning som bedrivs i klassrummet i en internationell kontext. Det är känt sedan tidigare att de mål som återfinns i styrdokument för teknikundervisning till stor del inte uppfylls genom rådande klassrumspraktik. I syfte att förstå bakgrunden till denna diskrepans fokuserar det här arbetet på lärarens roll i teknikundervisningen. Läraren betraktas här som den mellanhand som omvandlar retoriken till undervisningspraktik.

Avhandlingen bygger på fyra forskningsartiklar som använder både teoretiska och empiriska angreppsätt för att undersöka tekniklärarens roll som förmedlare av kunskap i teknikämnet. Artikel I undersöker teknikundervisning i en irländsk kontext genom att analysera tekniklärarnas reflektioner över sin praktik i klassrummet. Studien identifierar flera faktorer som påverkar klassrumspraktiken. Artikel II och III bygger vidare på det resultat som framkom i studie I genom att teoretiskt resonera kring lämpliga metoder för att undersöka teknikämnets klassrumspraktik.

Genom att använda den epistemologiska utgångspunkt för teknikundervisning som speglas i litteraturen, så utformades ett nytt sätt för att använda PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge, ett etablerat ramverk som beskriver lärarens kompetens) som förklaringsmodell för att beskriva klassrumspraktik. Artikel IV återvänder i en empirisk studie till tekniklärarnas roll men denna gång med ett transnationellt perspektiv i syfte att arbeta fram en grundläggande teori om lärares mål och syften med teknikundervisning. Studien bygger på intervjuer med lärare från Irland, Sverige och Nya Zealand

Resultatet i denna avhandling bidrar med kunskap på två sätt

För det första, efter att ha identifierat faktorer som stärker tidigare belägg att det finns spänningar mellan målen beskrivna i styrdokumenten och klassrumspraktiken, så togs det fram ett teoretiskt ramverk för forskningsstudier om teknikundervisning. Ramverket utgör en modell som på ett nytt sätt beskriver förhållandet mellan de faktorer som påverkar klassrumsundervisningen. Modellen ger möjligheter att på ett mer omfattande sätt än tidigare studera och förstå klassrumsundervisningen utifrån lärarens perspektiv. För det andra, som ett första steg mot att förstå den rådande undervisningspraktiken presenteras en grundläggande teori kring lärares syften med undervisning i teknik. Denna grundläggande teori erbjuder en sammanhållen modell för att formulera, lyfta fram och tydliggöra syften med att undervisa teknik i den verklighet som råder i klassrummen idag.

Like many areas of curricula internationally, technology education has encountered difficulties in achieving continuity between the rhetoric of prevailing policy and the reality of enacted practices. In technology education, the conceptually oriented nature of curricular goals is theorised to play a significant part in influencing this relationship. One way in which investigations of this relationship have been approached is considering the application of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) frameworks as a mechanism to understand the interaction of teachers’ knowledge and enacted practices. However, understanding from the philosophy of technology, and the technology education literature, suggests that technology education treats knowledge differently to many other disciplines. As a result of this, the interactions between teachers’ beliefs and knowledge are theorised to play a more significant role in influencing enacted practice in technology education. Building on this perspective, this article considers the need to investigate the roles of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, and the interactions between these, in the investigation of enacted practice. Further to this, the article problematises the potential for a dominance of exploratory research, though acknowledging the need for research within different paradigms; a common frame of reference is advocated. In advocating a more holistic approach to investigating enacted practice, and the factors which may influence teachers’ enactment of teaching practice, it is envisioned that this article takes a step towards methodological coherence regarding the study of enacted practice in technology education.

Programming was introduced as a core-content in the Swedish national curriculum during a 2018 revision. The introduction of programming as part of Technology and Mathematics has been surrounded with a lot of questions of how, when, what and by whom programming should be taught. It is acknowledged that teachers do not often have the content expertise or confidence in teaching ‘new’ topics as they are assigned to curricula. Previous research has explored this through the lens of teacher self-efficacy, where results have indicated that teachers’ self-efficacy in a particular area is important for creating effective learning opportunities for pupils in school. 

This paper reports on preliminary findings from an on-going project focusing on teacher self-efficacy in relation to the introduction of programming to the primary Technology curriculum. The projects’ objectives were to increase teachers' self-efficacy to teach programming in the Technology subject, and as a result of this, increase learning opportunities for the pupils. 

In order to be able to measure teachers’ development of self-efficacy towards teaching primary programming an instrument was developed based on an existing instrument used for measuring self-efficacy for science teaching. The Dimensions of Attitudes towards Programming (DAP) instrument was designed and piloted in two schools. The preliminary findings show that the DAP-instrument fulfilled its purpose within this project but needs to be further validated to become a valid instrument to measure teachers’ self-efficacy in programming in a broader sense. Two themes identified from the analysis are discussed in this paper; (1) a lack of confidence in teaching programming, which appeared to ultimately result in, (2) teachers’ questioning the why behind teaching programming in the Swedish primary school.

This paper establishes a theoretical position from which to analyse and reason about the difficulties associated with closing the gap between the provision of engineering education in universities and the needs of society. Broadly speaking, the disparity between societal expectations and university graduate profiles highlights that despite achieving success in university; recently graduated engineers are often under-prepared for their initial years in the workplace. Continuing reports of this disparity suggest that current efforts have not succeeded in sufficiently closing this gap. As an antecedent to reforming engineering education policy or advocating a new pedagogical approach, we first theorise the role of engineering education for society. In adopting lessons from the philosophy of technology and how this has influenced the discourse surrounding K-12 technology education, the relationship between technological activity and technological knowledge is considered as a vessel though which to articulate engineering education. Through situating engineering disciplines as different contexts for technology, the need for engineering students to develop an ontological position towards engineering as technological activity, emerges as important. In this view, we hold that a fluid epistemological boundary for engineering disciplines necessitates perspectives on how to enact engineering, as doing engineering in authentic contexts is advocated to support the well-established practices around learning about discipline specific declarative knowledge. The foregrounding of an understanding of engineering as technological activity, founded on (but not limited to) well-established discipline specific knowledge is framed as an 'ontology-based curriculum'. We conclude the paper with a discussion of some of the prevailing challenges to operationalising this conception of engineering education for society.

Since first conceived, the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) hasattracted much attention. Despite being lauded by educationalists as the unique knowledgebase of teachers, research on the concept over the past 30 years has yet to result in a universallyaccepted definition being presented. Much of the contentions surrounding the lack ofan agreed upon conception appear to have stemmed from difficulties in understanding therelationship between PCK, other areas of teacher knowledge, teacher beliefs, and enactedpractice. This paper considers the application of PCK frameworks to design and technology(D&T) education, through an analysis of the nature of the discipline from an ontologicaland epistemological perspective and contemporary perspectives on the construct of PCK.It is theorised that the volition afforded to teachers in D&T through weakly framed subjectboundaries negates the effective application of PCK frameworks, as teachers’ beliefs have agreater impact on enacted practices. In an attempt to better understanding enacted practicein D&T education, the paper proposes a methodological framework centred on the interactionsbetween teachers’ beliefs and knowledge in the discipline, through synthesising theconcept of amplifiers and filters of practice with the nature of D&T education. The proposedframework outlines the need to recognise individual teachers’ conception of capabilityas a critical influence on enacted practice.