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 paper discusses the design activities of students in secondary school in France. Graphics tools are now part of the capacity of design professionals. It is therefore apt to reflect on their integration into the technological education. Has the use of intermediate graphical tools changed students' performance, and if so in what direction,…

In higher education effective teaching includes making learning goals and standards clear to students. In architecture and design education in particular, goals and standards around assessment are often not well articulated. There is good evidence that when teachers engage students before an assessment in marking exemplars, and explain why the…

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…

This article describes the process of a learning study conducted in technology education in a Swedish preschool class. The learning study method used in this study is a collaborative method, where researchers and teachers work together as a team concerning teaching and learning about a specific learning object. The object of learning in this study…

Swedish technology teachers' views of technological knowledge are examined through a written survey and a series of interviews. The study indicates that technology teachers' understandings of what constitutes technological knowledge and how it is justified vary considerably. The philosophical discussions on the topic are unknown to them.…

Every student in the Swedish compulsory school system is entitled to information regarding their progress in all school subjects given. In 2008, a mandatory assessment tool, called the individual development plan (IDP) with written assessment, was introduced by the Government. The statutory purpose was to provide teachers with a formative…

In the school based subject of design and technology (D&T) a fundamental element is designing and making functional products using critical and creative thinking whilst developing skills in the use of a variety of processes and materials. Teachers of the subject need to be more then just "enthusiastic" about the processes involved if…

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…

Within the field of technology education, evaluating technical solutions is considered as an important topic. Research indicates that pupils have difficulties in evaluating technical solutions in terms of fitness for purpose, i.e. how effective a technical solution supports its intended function. By using the learning study, which is an iterative…

In Ireland, Technology Education's structure and organisation across the levels of education is not delivered or governed in a coherent manner. Technology Education in primary level education, for students between 5 and 12 years of age, does not explicitly exist as a separate subject. In primary level education, Social, Environmental and…

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study on the effectiveness of an innovative one-year pre-service Graduate Diploma of Teaching (secondary) for teachers of Technology. The timing of this study is significant. Over a decade of review and adjustment to the Technology curriculum, leading to the new learning area of Technology in the…

This paper reports on a professional development that was designed and implemented in an attempt to broaden teachers' knowledge of the nature of technology and also enhance their technological pedagogical practices. The professional development was organised in four phases with each phase providing themes for reflection and teacher learning…

"We know that progress depends on discovery, inventions, creativity and design, but we have simply supposed that it happens anyway," de Bono (1999 p. 43). Technology education is ostensibly a foundation for future designers and creative thinking. However evidence of good design or creative thinking in outcomes displayed in school…