In Germany, there is a shortage of skilled workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and especially in technology with declining interest in technology and with supposedly fewer teachers in technology education in the next 20 years. The present study examined whether students' interest in STEM is dependent…

Men continue to outnumber women in many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields, particularly technical fields such as engineering and computer science. Educational interventions aimed at addressing the gender disparity between men and women have generally focused on increasing the interest of girls and women during high school…

When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses on how the affective, cognitive and behavioral attitudinal components of technology education can be incorporated using a two-step survey: the traditional PATT-questionnaire (PATT-SQSE) and the recently…

Although technology determines our everyday life, many of us still have neither special knowledge nor interest. Our study focused on a reliable and valid empirical monitoring of interest in and social implications of technology by applying an existing scale to 610 participants. First, we confirmed the factor structure for the school student…

Today's dynamic change of the pupils' technological environment certainly affects their preferences towards technology, which may be important for planning, structuring and organising general technology education. This highlights the problem of general student preferences, which are not the product of current trends but the universal rules for…

STEM presents a challenge to education at large. The enrollment numbers in higher education STEM tracks are ever-decreasing numbers all around the globe. More so, young people's interest in and attitudes towards STEM seem to be free falling. Educational interventions that can help boost the attractiveness of STEM are therefore needed, and diverse…

This article reports an investigation of challenges faced by Chinese technology teachers to infuse engineering design into technology education. A five-point Likert scale, including 25 items, was designed and 339 teachers participated in this survey voluntarily. Consequently, 333 qualified questionnaires were analyzed, and the following results…

Considering teachers' attitudes as an important factor influencing pupils' learning performance, personality, attitudes and actions, this study explored differences in high school general technology teachers' attitudes towards technology in regard of the personal factors of gender, teaching experience, pre-service major and in-service training…

This paper studies the impact of gender on the interest in engineering and technical subjects of the students in the first courses of secondary education. A statistical analysis was carried out, analyzing the use of a free virtual-reality application, developed by the 3M Foundation, which aims to bring these subjects to the students.…

The inclusion of Computational Thinking (CT) in the classroom along with the promotion of positive attitudes in early ages towards technology have great relevance in the current educational paradigm. This study analyses whether CT instruction may improve pupils' attitudes towards technology, and also considers whether instructional approaches and…

Pupils' attitudes towards technology have been widely discussed for over three decades, but the equally important topic of teachers' attitudes towards technology has not gained similar attention. To address this gap, the technology teachers' attitude towards technology (TTATT) scale was developed and validated by pilot testing with 140 Chinese…

The pupils' attitudes toward technology survey (PATT) has been used for 30 years and is still used by researchers. Since it was first developed, the validity of the questionnaire constructs has primarily been discussed from a statistical point of view, while few researchers have discussed the type of attitudes and interest that the questionnaire…

The aim of this article is to report the results of an empirical study on adolescents' interest, self-efficacy, and vocational interest in technology and design. Following the expectancy-value model, we wanted to know how context-specific interest in technology and perceived self-efficacy in solving technical tasks are developed at lower…

Many studies have shown the importance of the socio-cultural factors that lead girls to desert scientific and technological courses. Over a long period, the contents of the French technology education (TE) college curricula may well have contributed to strengthening the feeling among girls that this discipline was better suited to boys. The choice…

In the new Swedish curriculum for the preschool (2010) technology education is emphasized as one of the most significant pedagogical areas to work with. The aim of this article is to investigate how girls and boys explore and learn technology as well as how their teachers frame this in free play in two Swedish preschools. The study is inspired by…