Students' attitudes towards technology

Abstract

Technology is more present than ever. Young people are interested in tech- nological products, but their opinions on education and careers in technology are not particularly positive (Johansson in Mathematics, science & technology education report. European Round Table of Industrials, Brussel, 2009). If we want to stimulate students’ attitudes towards technology we need to have a better understanding of the factors which determine attitudes. Different studies (e.g. Volk and Yip in Int J Technol Des Educ 9:57–71, 1999; Jones et al. in Sci Educ 84(2):180–192, 2000; George in Int J Sci Educ 28(6):571–589, 2006; Salminen-Karlsson in Int J Sci Educ 29(8):1019–1033, 2007) have proven that students’ characteristics correlate with their attitudes towards technology. As these studies often focus on effects on a specific aspect of attitude; the total effect cannot be interpreted correctly because attitude is a multi-dimensional concept (Osborne et al. in Int J Sci Educ 23(5):441–467, 2003). This study focuses upon six aspects of attitude namely: interest, career aspirations, boredom, consequences, difficulty and gender issues. Therefore a multivariate model has been set up. This allows us to answer the main research question: What is the predictive power of students’ characteristics with regard to aspects of their attitudes towards technology? The revalidated version of the Pupils Attitude Towards Technology instrument (Ardies et al. in Des Technol Educ 18(1):8–19, 2013) was used in a large (n = 2,973) scale investigation of 12–14 year old students (Grade 1 and Grade 2 of secondary education). Given the multilevel nature of the data and that students are allo- cated to specific teachers, we analysed the data with a multivariate multilevel approach. The results of the study show a decline in interest in technology from the first to the second grade of secondary education. This finding appears to be stronger for girls. Interest in technology is significantly positively related to the amount of time that technology istaught for, as well as to the teacher. Parents have a positive influence on several aspects of attitude to technology when mothers and/or fathers have a profession related to technology. Equally, the presence of technological toys at home is a significantly positive character- istic. As the results confirmed previous, fragmented studies in related disciplines like science education, this study contributes to the wider body of knowledge concerning students’ attitudes towards technology and how this can be investigated.