Proceedings of the Second AAAS Technology Education Research Conference
Setting
Priorities for Research in Technology Education
Daniel
L. Householder, Compiler
Iowa
State
University
Research
Topics Suggested in the Group Brainstorming Session
Conference
participants identified a long list of research topics and questions during
the final conference session. Unfortunately, participants were unable to group
the topics and questions or to prioritize them during the time available in
the conference schedule. The suggested topics and questions included:
- How
people learn in the context of technology education.
- Political
implications-firsthand discussions with officials who need evidence that technology
education contributes to overall educational achievement.
- What
is special about what they learn in technology classrooms?
- How
can technology education provide opportunities for children in charter schools?
What can be done for home-schooled students?
- Developmental
studies of people at different ages.
- What
are the preconceptions and misconceptions about design?
- What
misconceptions put individuals at risk?
- What
does the ideal assignment say about design?
- Help
teachers design experiences.
- Methods
to bridge from incorrect misconceptions toward correct conceptions.
- Moving
from naïve ideas to sophisticated understanding.
- Conceptions
(or misconceptions) among teachers and professionals in the field.
- How
do teachers diagnose what is going on?
- Assess
interactions between students and teachers.
- How
do technological design projects transfer to scientific investigation?
- Are
the decision-making tendencies of guidance counselors toward or away from
technology education?
- How
do students design and what do they learn?
- Procedures
used by naïve designers.
- What
do we have to start with and what are best practices to help students get
where you want them to go?
- How
do you help teachers learn those practices?
- What
is the best way to get students involved in question-asking?
- How
much hands-on experience is needed?
- How
much does the teacher need to know about the technologies?
- How
many alternatives does a group need to develop?
- Should
portfolio development be an individual or group activity?
- What
roles should the teacher play in technology?
- How
can we facilitate lifelong learning in technology education?
- What
is the role of design competitions?
- Develop
taxonomy for teaching design.
- How
do children develop ideas?
- How
do you facilitate the learning of design competence?
- What
design competence do learners have when they come to class?
- How
effective are the various teaching strategies?
- How
do private, social, and public interactions in the classroom affect the effectiveness
of the pedagogy? How are the ideas expressed?
- How
is student work, including the ability to identify and develop ideas, impacted
upon by formal and informal education and performance in other areas?
- What
influences pre-college students' selection of courses of study?
- How
and why do different communities of students select different courses of study?
- Articulated
learning and the need for an articulated curriculum in technology.
- How
novices and experts do technological problem solving.
- Literacy
and related factors.
- Role
of new media in teaching.
- What
is the relationship between technology education and the ways children learn?
- What
is the relationship between technology education and economic effectiveness?
- Technological
design and scientific inquiry.
- What
resources are available for K-12? Are they appropriately organized for contemporary
instruction?
- How
people build notions of causality in complex systems, in doing design, simulation-related
to device knowledge.
- Professional
researchers investigating practitioners' beliefs about what children know
in an area.
- Test
technology educators' beliefs about why they do what they do and identify
disparities between performance and expectations.
- Are
both Mode 1 and Mode 2 research needed? (See the Barlex paper.)
- Is
there-or should there be a middle way? How else did we get Post-It notes?
- Show
teachers another option or a better way-identified by studying exemplary practices.
- How
much experience is required to change inappropriate beliefs?
- Expert
researcher-classroom practitioner teams.
- How
to increase creativity.
- What
educational benefits accrue from taking risks and challenging authority in
design?
- How
to do pre-service and in-service teacher education.
- How
to identify best practices in design.
- Are
art, design, architectural design and engineering design similar? How do the
design processes differ?
- Case
studies of contexts and how effective they are at different grade levels.
Which contexts enrich technological activities?
- Two-dimensional
or three-dimensional representation-at what grade levels?
- What
design and problem solving experiences are appropriate at what grade levels?
- What
technical knowledge is required to be successful in design?
- Develop
instrumentation and legitimate and effective assessment methodologies for
assessing technological literacy.
- Comparisons
of assessment strategies.
- What
makes a good teacher education program?
- What
are the attributes of a good technology teacher?
- What
can we teach an aspiring teacher well without the teacher having classroom
experience?
- What
can we do during the induction experience, and what belongs in the in-service
setting?
- How
to capture student work in process at several stages; how to analyze the stages
in the development of their thinking, designing, and making at each stage.
- How
to decide whether an initial design should be standardized, whether a problem
should be open-ended, or whether student approaches to the problem differ
depending upon the initial formulation of the design challenge?
- Does
an understanding of the nature of technology improve decision making?
- Student
connections between technology and society.
- What
technology education programs are needed for individuals with special needs?
- What
technology education programs are needed for developing countries?
- What
technology education programs are needed to foster economic development?
- How
can teachers be convinced to do technology education?
- How
do teachers use technology as a vehicle for accomplishing broader educational
purposes?
- What
do students think that they are doing when they are doing technology?
- What
is the affective component-the heart and soul of technology education?
- Why
is the craft tradition so resilient?
- How
can a similar affective commitment be built in technology?
- How
to make technology meaningful in the lives of learners?
- Investigate
affective outcomes in the light of current understanding of how people learn.
- To
what extent does technology motivate learners? How does it affect self-esteem?
- Deal
with the confusion between technology education and instructional technology.
(Mode 2)
- Integrate
research on pedagogy with outcomes assessment and teacher education.
- Without
knowing how children think about technology, it is difficult to assess affective
dimensions.
- Building
the knowledge base about learning and teaching and teacher education in the
light of what we know about how people learn.
- What
do we want students to learn?
- What
do we know about how they presently learn it?
- Teacher
education research should be based upon and connected with the knowledge base
on learning and teaching.
- Professional
development for teachers: how well do current programs work?
- Is
the "WestEd" model for science and mathematics teacher professional development
applicable in technology education? (Loucks-Horsely, S., Hewson, P. S., Love,
N., & Stiles, K. E. [1998]. Designing professional development for
teachers of science and mathematics. Thousand
Oaks, CA:
Corwin Press.)
- What
are the goals and outcomes achieved by classroom instruction?
- What
are the typical understandings developed in response to the instruction?
- What
faculty development is needed?
- What
methods could be used to achieve it?
- What
gender differences occur in technology learning?
- Understand
differential experiences of different groups in inclusive groupings.
- Outcomes
need to be differentiated for different groups?
- Overall
effects of educational treatments should be assessed first.
- What
prerequisite competencies are needed?
- What
are the effects of learning styles?
- What
are the effects of teaching styles?
- What
are the effects of testing approaches?
- How
can teachers best deal with diversity?
Summary
of Categories of Research Needed in Technology Education
Gary
Benenson
City
College
- Outcomes
of technology education
- Methods
of finding out what students have learned
- Assessment
and evaluation of best practices
- Children's
conceptions of technology
- Teacher
education methodologies and outcomes
- Methodologies
