A phenomenographic study of Greek primary school students' representations concerning technology in daily life

Abstract

The present research investigated and studied students' representations about daily life technologies, in a prospect of studying technology in Greek primary education. In the research participated 60 Greek primary school students aged 9 to 12 years old. Research data were collected through semi-structured, personal, clinical-type interviews. Each interview investigated student's conceptions and views about the following thematic areas: the concept of technology, daily life technologies, technological change, and the impact of technology use in everyday life. Data analysis revealed that the majority of students equated technology with modern tools and appliances, especially with computers, TV, mobile phones, satellites and other micro- and macro-technologies, whereas experience based technologies (de Vries, Technology education: Beyond the "technology is applied science" paradigm. J. Technol. Edu. 8 (1996), 7) have been hardly recognized by them as technology. Also students' representations can be categorized either as technology-oriented representations, which focus on a collection of technical means without reference to humans, or as human-oriented representations, focused on technical means with substantial reference to human needs and activities. Depending on these types of representations, students seem to conceive differently the nature of the problems, which they recognize that the wide use of technology causes mainly to the environment and the responsibility of the user for these problems. Moreover, it seems that the concept of technological change is a quite difficult one for the students. In order to help students form adequate representations about daily life technology and technological change an appropriate teaching approach was designed on the basis of these students' representations.