Exploring students' conceptualisations of technology through their experiences of it (in and out of school)

The aim of this study was to explore students’ experiences and conceptualisation of technology. The study employed a qualitative case study approach, with a sample comprising 16 students and four teachers from two schools, as the researcher believed that looking at more than one school would lead to a better understanding of technology education in the classroom. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews for both students and teachers and lesson observation notes, and transcripts were analysed using an inductive thematic analysis technique developed by Braun et al. (2014).
The findings indicate the existence of a huge disconnect between the students’ experience of technology and their perspectives on technology, which seemed to suggest that more efforts are needed to introduce learning activities that reflect existing literature’s views of the meaning of technology. This study found that outside school, students conceptualised technology in terms of technological artefacts, which was indicative of their limited perspectives on technology. The findings also showed that in the classroom, most students’ experience of technology aligned more with theoretical aspects of technical drawing (construction of different angles, bisection of lines and angles), which is similar to what students are taught in technical and vocational education that aims to prepare them for specific jobs, while technology education leads them to develop technological literacy – the ability to use, manage, understand and evaluate technology in general. This difference highlighted the need to develop a framework for understanding technological concepts in order to help students understand not only familiar aspects of technology, but also unfamiliar things and ideas or concepts that have not been discussed much in the literature (De Vries, 2005; Collier-Reed, 2009; DiGironimo, 2011). Consequently, this study proposed a model for conceptualising technology that has potential educational benefits, which could be developed to help future research, policy and practice to enhance students’ strengths and reduce their weaknesses in learning about technology. If we are educating students to be technologically literate, we must encourage them to advance their understanding of technology for real-world learning and help them to become global citizens.