Understanding and Attitudes of Primary School Students towards Engineering and Technology

Technology as a scientific representation and exploration of all machines, devices, processes, infrastructure ..., which are a part of the transformation of the natural world into the world of human desires and needs, is becoming not only important, but a key factor in modern society. The challenges of today, such as globalisation, demographic change, food policy, the environment, natural and human resources, require a higher level of usage, treatment, understanding, and evaluation of technology from every citizen. Each individual encounters the challenges of technological literacy education already in kindergarten and continues throughout primary and secondary education by profiling technological ability in his studies and later in his professional career. In this master's thesis the focus was on primary technical education (TE) in those grades where the subject of engineering and technology (EaT) is independent and thus provides key knowledge, abilities, skills, and a developing relationship for technological literacy education. TiT is a compulsory subject that accompanies students from 6th to 8th grade of primary school (PS). There are 4 areas in the curriculum (C); technical means, technology, work organisation, and economy. All the areas and contents that students learn in their elective subjects, which are related to technology, are described. Teaching contemporary topics is important for a quality education, as the nature of TE has changed greatly. Above all, it is important that technological literacy (TL) in the classroom is developed, which is what is needed for living in the technological world. Researchers find that the perception of technology’s nature is often ingrained and changes do not happen easily, so content that could be a part of modern TE is researched and the nature of technology examined. When it comes to technology, studies often show that students are naive and have a lack of understanding. Their perception focuses only on advanced objects they use on a daily basis, especially in terms of information and communications technology (ICT). Furthermore, according to previous research, students' opinions about education and career choices in the technical field are quite poor. However, understanding technology as well as students' attitudes towards EaT is part of TL, which represents the goal of TE. An empirical research is conducted, in which students from 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades of arbitrarily selected Slovenian primary schools are included. In this research the understanding of technology in 8 categories and the attitude of students towards EaT in 6 categories is examined. A comparison between the understanding of technology and the attitude of students towards EaT is made. The results show an above-average understanding of all categories of technology's nature. The statistical test between the sexes does not show statistically significant differences in the understanding of technology (p > 0.05), however, differences in almost all categories occur among students of different grades (the effect is moderate in all; 0.04 ≤ r < 0.16). The largest statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) arise between 6th and 9th grade – ninth-graders understand technology better than sixth-graders. The exact opposite is when looking at the attitudes towards EaT. There are no statistically significant differences between different grades (p > 0.05), but there are differences between the sexes. It is not surprising that in some categories we find great dissimilarities (the effect between the sexes is r = 0.53 in the opinion that engineering is more suitable for boys), as previous research also provides results, which show that boys have a better attitude towards EaT. The analysis of the connection between the understanding of technology's nature and the attitude towards EaT reveals various strong connections, especially in the category of awareness of EaT (CTiT)'s consequences. It is presumed that a better understanding of technology statistically and significantly (p < 0.05) contributes to the awareness and knowledge of EaT’s consequences. The research revealed and confirmed the influence of the wider environment on the development of students' attitudes towards EaT, especially the desire for a professional career in the technical and engineering field is related to the interest in EaT’s content, including developing awareness and knowledge of EaT’s consequences. The resulting master's thesis is a good starting point for both curriculum developers and EaT teachers to incorporate contemporary content related to current EaT concepts and contexts. Future research could include a comparison of several concepts of understanding technology as well as a link to the main achievement of EaT-TL