Development ofAuxiliary Implements for Fixation ofWood Piece in Hand Sawing Learning Implemented in School for Disabled Students

This is a technological problem-solving project-based learning for students in technology education teacher preparation course to apply their knowledge comprehensively and upgrade their skills efficiently in making things (monodsukwi). The main task is to develop an auxiliary implements for the fixation ofwood piece stablely to help disabled students learn sawing operation by fully using their two hands. Magnetic holders were adopted in auxiliary implements as the side-stoppers and end-stopper, so that the wood piece can be easily and immediately fixed or released just by changing over switch to ON or OFF. The validity ofthe developed auxiliary implements was verified by putting it to trial for students in the Secondary Special Support School attached to Faculty of Education, Kumamoto University. Based on the responses to the questionnaire survey, the positive evaluation was obtained from their comments. "It is a very helpful tool for disabled students to overcome difficulties in wood sawing learning. " "Training by using such functional tool is especially an effective way to stimulate students improveing their literacy and mastering basic knowledge through active learning." Doubtlessly to say, the usefulness ofthis tool can also be extended to the ordinary elementary school students and unskilledjunior high school students. From the standpoint of finding high quality practical hands-on activities for technology education teacher preparation, this project was successful in collaboration with the school attached to our faculty. The development of the tool to meet the specific educational needs provided a student-centered learning through experiencing the whole monodsukwi processes of motivation, designning, making and evaluation. This approach is an authentic application for pre-service teachers to develop and improve thei