2011/1/3
Mehmet Fatih TAŞAR
Fatih AYDIN
Gazi Üniversitesi
Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi
Science Education Program
Ankara, TURKEY
[email protected]
Science Education Program
Bolu, TURKEY
[email protected]
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
The vision of Turkish Science and Technology
Curriculum has been ambitiously set as
“educating all students, whatever their
individual differences might be, as
scientifically literate individuals.” It is hoped
that science and technology literate citizens
can understand relationships and interactions
between science, technology, society, and
environment (MEB, 2005, p.5).
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Many people immediately associate “technology” with
computers and internet rather than its functional
definition of “changing natural world to fulfill our needs”
(Rose & Dugger, 2003, p.1). Studies indicate that
technology mostly reminds electronic things and it only
involves such things (e.g. Volk & Dugger, 2005). “Students
have existing concepts of technological processes, such as
problem solving and design cycles, and the different
aspects of that process, such as modeling, skills, planning
and evaluation. These existing concepts affect current
technological practice, as well as future learning of
technological concepts and process. Further research is
required to further understand and change students’
existing technological concepts.” (Jones, 2002, p.88).
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When you hear the word “technology, what first comes to mind?
Jones and Carr (1992), determine that many
elementary school teachers regard
technology education as computers, using
computer and using other technologies in
problem solving. Also, Volk and Dugger
(2005) studied what Americans and Hong
Kong people think about technology. They
asked them some questions about
technology. Their findings, for instance, are
shown below:
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
Technology is an indispensable part of our
life. We are making businesses by using
different technologies of all sorts. Perhaps,
the situation makes us dependent on
technology and this addiction is rapidly
increasing. “Citizens who understand and are
comfortable with the concepts and workings
of modern technology are better able to
participate fully in society and in the global
marketplace” (ITEA, 2003).
Computers
Advancement
New Inventions
Electronics
Information
Science
Space
Things That Make Life Easier
Machinery
Internet
Education
Others
5
HK (%)
47
7
7
5
4
3
3
3
2
1
1
19
US (%)
68
2
1
5
0
1
1
0
1
2
1
18
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Which more closely fits what you think of when you hear the
word “technology”?
Computers and the Internet
The application of knowledge.....
Changing the natural world
Don’t know/refused
HK (%)
34
66
US (%)
63
36
---
1
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Jones (1997), stated that in-depth researches
are needed on students’ understanding of
technological concepts and processes and
ways in which these concepts and processes
can be enhanced. De Vries (2003), also
highlight that researches are also rare on
students’ understanding of technological
concepts.
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
1. How do pre-service science teachers have a
cognitive structure about technology in their minds?
2. What are pre-service science teachers’ ideas about,
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
The purpose of the study was to investigate
pre-service science teachers’ cognitive
structures and ideas about nature of
technology.
For this purpose, the following research
questions of this study were identified.
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The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
Defining of technology?
Technology literacy?
Nature (features, qualities) of technology?
Relationship between technology and science?
Relationship between technology and society?
Inventor and scientist?
Technology education?
In addition, for a long time, technology has
been widely defined as “applications of
science.” However, today, by putting aside
this traditional paradigm, researchers are
questioning what technology is and how it
interacts with science and the society in a
much deeper level (de Vries, 1996).
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The study was conducted with the
participation of 4th year pre-service science
teachers (N=41) majoring in science
education in fall semester of 2007.
During the study the participants were
enrolled in a science, technology and society
course during data collection.
3. What are the implications for science teacher
education?
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Three instruments were used to gather data
in the study.
These instruments were
a word association task (WAT)
the views on technology questionnaire (VOTQ), and
an interview protocol.
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Participants’ ideas about technology were investigated by
using Views on Technology questionnaire (VOTQ) and
interview protocol. In order to construct VOTQ, 16
questions related to technology were selected from Views
on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) questionnaire
improved by Aikenhead et al. (1989). These questions
were consisted of four domains.
12th items )
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Interview was another way to investigate
participants’ ideas about nature of technology.
In order to construct interview protocol, 12 semistructured questions were selected about nature
of technology. 7 participants were interviewed
face to face by the researchers. Each interview
was recorded 15 minutes approximately.
Interviews were analyzed descriptively into
seven research questions that were identified
from literature. Each participant was coded with
“P” (e.g. Participant-1:P1)
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In addition, in order to assess the participants’ views, we used the
same categorization system of views (namely informed, has merit,
and naive) that exists in other related studies (e.g. Rubba,
Bradford & Harkness, 1996; Tairab, 2001; Erdoğan, 2004).
A panel of 7 experts and 3 researchers served to categorize the
views about each item in the instrument (for the details of
categories of each item see Aydın, 2009). VOTQ was adapted by
using back translation method (Maneesriwongul and Dixon, 2004).
VOTQ was translated from English to Turkish then from Turkish to
English and was matched by two field experts and was controlled
grammar by two field experts before asked participants. So,
content validity of the adapted instrument was provided. Also,
VOTQ was applied to 41 participants taken in pilot study in the
first sense.
Social structure of technology (13th, 14th, 15th and 16th items)
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
Defining technology, (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th items)
Effect of society on technology, (5th and 6th items)
Effect of technology on society, and (7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and
The 2nd East Asian Int'l Conference on Teacher Education Research
Participants’ cognitive structure about
technology was investigated by using a Word
Association Task (WAT). In order to construct
the WAT, ten words were selected by the
researchers. These key words were
Technology, Design, Science, R & D (Research
and Development), Invention, Discovery,
Industry, Informatics, Scientist, and Inventor.
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We have seen that the participants were not
able to link as many words together as
desired. The number of links (associations)
made and the quality of the linkages both
suggest that the pre-service teachers’
understandings were at a rather naive stage.
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Categories of views
Original Item Number and Item Description
10211
10311
10411
10431
20511
20521
40221
40231
40311
40413
40511
40531
80111
80122
80133
80211
Defining technology
Meaning of research and development
Relationship between science and technology
Relationship between science and technology
Effect of society on science and technology
Effect of society on science and technology
Relationship science, technology and moral decisions
Relationship science, technology and legal decisions
Trade-offs between the positive and negative effects of science and technology
Relationship science, technology and social problems
Effect of science and technology on society
Effect of science and technology on society
Usage decisions regarding a new technology
Usage decisions regarding a new technology
Usage decisions regarding a new technology
Control of technological developments
Naive
Has
Merit
Informed
17
2
6
22
5
1
19
9
10
1
2
6
6
20
1
--
5
22
2
16
3
6
7
4
9
9
22
10
11
5
23
28
18
16
32
2
32
33
14
27
21
30
16
24
23
15
16
12
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For us it was not surprising to see statements from
our participants such as the following:
“Technology is a progressing science in my opinion.
Technology can be defined as computers, inventions
which facilitate life, shortly.”
(Excerpt 1, Interview P1, line 3-4)
“Technology is applied science such as manufacturing a
thing in industry.” (Excerpt 2, Interview P2, line 3)
“Technology is an output of science. It is the results
obtained trough science. Technology is the application
of science.” (Excerpt 3, Interview P4, line 4-5)
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Especially, they regard technology and science as the
same (just like the two sides of the same coin) and they
also think that technology is a sub discipline of science,
output of science, or just an application of science. They
generally consider technology as modern electronic
devices like computers, inventions, and end product of
science. This type of understanding could be the result of
the treatment of the issue in the mass media. Moreover,
participants thought that science and technology cannot
be separated or distinguished from each other and
claimed that there could be no technology without science
(or to put it the other way around technology cannot exist
without science and science has to precede technology).
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It is seen that the data triangulation process by the
word association task, views on technology
questionnaire and the implemented interview
protocol worked well in that the findings from
different sources by different methods revealed
supporting results. The findings suggest that
participants’ conceptual structures about technology
are generally at the novice level. In addition, it is also
seen that participants’ knowledge of what constitutes
a plausible definition of technology, effect of
technology on society, effect of society on technology
and social structure of technology are all at novice
levels.
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We see here that pre-service teachers held
informed views for more than half (9/16) of
the presented statements about technology.
But the table above shows that there is much
room for improvement and developing preservice teachers’ understandings of the
nature of technology.
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The findings of our study are quite
compatible with the findings in the existing
literature and support them. For example, the
previous findings (e.g. Jones & Carr, 1992;
Volk & Dugger, 2005; de Vries, 2005) have
been supported by our findings.
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2011/1/3
THANK YOU
FOR
YOUR ATTENTION!
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