In 2009 the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture assigned the National Board of Education with the task of carrying out a nationwide evaluation of all seven cross-curricular themes. The evaluation is one of the largest education evaluation projects the National Board of Finland has ever organised. The present authors were invited to evaluate…

This article discusses pupils' readiness for self-regulation in Exploratory Production in Technology Education. In the forethought phase of Exploratory Production, pupils envision and regulate their technological production activities. Next, in the performance phase, the envisioned goals are tried and implemented through ideating, planning…

This comparative study investigates how two groups of design and technology students generated ideas in an asynchronous computer-mediated communication setting. The generated ideas were design ideas in the form of sketches. Each group comprised five students who were all 15 years of age. All the students were from the same secondary school but…

In this article, an instrument for assessing upper secondary school students' levels of technological literacy is presented. The items making up the instrument emerged from a previous study that employed a phenomenographic research approach to explore students' conceptions of technology in terms of their understanding of the "nature…

A diverse group of 20 high school students from four states in the US were individually provided with an engineering design challenge. Students chosen were in capstone engineering courses and had taken multiple engineering courses. As students considered the problem and developed a solution, observational data were recorded and artifacts…

Recent publications have elevated the priority of increasing the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content for K-12 education. The STEM education community must invest in the development of valid and reliable to scales to measure STEM content, knowledge fusion, and perceptions of the nature of STEM. This brief…

The level of science skills in Spanish students are significantly below the average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and university teachers agree that the level of freshmen students' skills is too low. Moreover, the number of engineering enrollments has been declining in recent years. The purpose of this study…

Inasmuch as design is a central activity in K-12 engineering education, understanding the students' motivation during engaging in engineering design activities will help educators to develop and evaluate strategies for engineering design challenges, and improve curriculum. The objective of this study is to better understand the relationship…

As cultural, social, political and economic changes take place, the secondary or high school curriculum should reflect and respond to changing needs and aspirations of students. Technology Education has been proactive in this arena as it has transformed over the decades to meet ever-changing societal needs. The most recent change to the discipline…

This study was designed to explore the effects of problem-based learning (PBL) strategies on the attitudes of female senior high school students toward integrated knowledge learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Content analysis and focus group methods were adopted as the research processes. Data and information…

The purpose of the study was to explore a learning behavioral model of project-based learning (PBL) for senior high school students in the context of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Using "audio speakers" as the project theme, a series of tasks were designed to be solved using STEM knowledge via an online platform and…

Assessing technological literacy in the USA will require a large expenditure of resources. While these important initiatives are taking place, it is useful to analyze existing archival data to get a sense of students' understanding of technology. Such archival data exists from the entries submitted to the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVisions competition…

Infusing creative thinking competence through the design process of authentic projects requires not only changing the teaching methods and learning environment, but also adopting new assessment methods, such as portfolio assessment. The participants in this study were 128 high school pupils who have studied MECHATRONICS from 10th to 12th grades…

The main goals of this study were to look after the technological knowledge construction process by high-school high-achievers, and their ability to design and implement solutions for technological problems. More specifically, we examine the contribution of Project-based-learning (PBL), as pedagogical means for supporting the students' knowledge…

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of students' knowledge formed in information education at junior high-school level. Seventy-two 7th graders (first-year junior high-school students) and 78 10th graders (first-year high-school students) participated in the study. A cluster analysis was performed on 40 items of knowledge that…