Digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) are accessible to the public, including children and families. However, a variety of technical skills, tools, and expertise are needed in these spaces, and Fab Lab staff--instructors working there--are in a key role in helping Fab Lab users. There is, however, a lack of research on how these instructors…

Drawing on Dweck and Leggett's (1988) implicit beliefs of intelligence framework, the present study explored the incremental belief of intelligence (IBI) and how it correlated to metacognitive skills that reflected vocational students' project design engagement. Data were collected from students from 2 vocational high schools involved in project…

Design education has traditionally been deemed a face-to-face endeavor causing online learning to be disregarded as a viable teaching option. Nonetheless, the recent impact of COVID-19 pressured design schools to rapidly migrate online, impelling many educators to utilize this unfamiliar and largely dismissed methodology. The impending problems…

In the architectural design process, built precedent can be a valuable resource to shape design situations. Typology, the systematic categorisation of precedent, may act as a means to interpret this information and identify relationships between existing buildings and new design. This work explores the link between typology and the design process…

Design is core element of general technology education internationally. While there is a degree of contention with regards to its treatment, there is general consensus that the inclusion of design in some form is important, if not characteristic, of the subject area. Acknowledging that design is important, there are many questions which need to be…

Strategic knowledge is a differentiating factor for conveying the design intent when modelling parts in parametric feature-based CAD systems. Nevertheless, it is rarely considered in training or, when it is tackled, it takes a traditional pedagogical approach that is far from ideal for acquiring knowledge with highly cognitive requirements. This…

According to Mitcham's (Thinking through Technology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994) fourfold philosophical framework, technological knowledge and volition, with their origin within human beings, give rise to technological activities expressed as concrete technological objects. Technologies are associated with a wide array of…

Since first conceived, the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has attracted much attention. Despite being lauded by educationalists as the unique knowledge base of teachers, research on the concept over the past 30 years has yet to result in a universally accepted definition being presented. Much of the contentions surrounding the lack…

The present study sheds new light on the knowledge dimensions and processes that occur when designing new concepts and prototypes in higher education. In particular, this study aims to develop the conceptual understanding of activities and processes that help students to gain new knowledge and understanding while designing new products and…

In general, designing is conceived as a complex, personal, creative and open-ended skill. Performing a well-developed skill is mainly an implicit activity. In teaching, however, it is essential to make explicit. Learning a complex skill like designing is a matter of doing and becoming aware how to do it. For teachers and students therefore, it…

Many education initiatives in science and technology education aim to create enthusiasm among young people to pursue a career in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Research suggests that personal interaction between secondary school students and scientists could be a success factor, but there is a need for more in-depth…

The importance of creativity in technological design education is now clearly recognized, both in everyday understanding and also in formal curriculum guidelines. Design offers special opportunities for creativity because of the "openness" of problems (ill-defined problems, the existence of a variety of pathways to the solution, the absence of…

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…