To Örebro University

Bringing more girls and women into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, is often highlighted as an aim in education and industry. A constantly growing body of research on engagement is driven by equity concerns caused by the unbalanced gender distribution in STEM. In this study, Swedish teenage girls on a three-day technology camp are in focus. The camp was an initiative with three goals: “Get girls interested, keep girls interested and provide knowledge about futures within technology professions”. We explored the participating girls’ technological activities and conceptions of technology at the camp. Data collection was conducted through participant observations and a focus group interview. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and a gender theoretical framework. Results show the camp presented uncertain notions of what technology can be, and traditionally male-oriented domains were “girlified”. However, girlified activities might not have been constructive in this context since the girls expressed interest in technology before the camp and showed few signs of gendering technology – they liked all kinds of technology. Girlified technology can, at its worst, give a false image of the future industrial work life that the camp organiser aimed to inspire. Despite this, the camp activities were still meaningful and relevant to the girls. The camp created opportunities for the girls to develop their sense of being technical and a feeling of belonging. Implications for technology classroom settings and future camps are to value practical work and improvisational design without leaving the teaching unreflected. This could be a way of engaging and familiarising girls with the multifaceted world of technology without girlifying it. In addition, a broad conception of technology could make gender codes less relevant and open new opportunities.

Flickor är lika intresserade av teknik som pojkar – men bilden är ofta en annan. Vi måste hjälpas åt att bredda bilden av teknik och visa att den är för alla, skriver forskaren Ulrika Sultan.

We have seen students struggling with understanding and defining technology during years of educating pre-service teachers. This study describes lessons with pre-service technology teachers as we try, for us, a new way of scaffolding their understandings. By teaching technology through STEAM, we aimed to get our students thinking about technology and exploring what technology is for them. We chose aesthetic learning processes as a tool to reach this aim. The concept of aesthetic learning processes has been developed within Scandinavian educational research and is often used in our specific teaching environment within higher education. Students were introduced to the stop-motion movie technique and asked to express what technology meant to them. We analysed the student's movies through inductive analysis. Even though it was the aim of the students' task, we discovered that little technology content knowledge did transfer to the stop motion movies. On the other hand, from an aesthetic perspective, they were great. The movie gave us something to consider as teachers. It taught us what could be made better when trying to understand technology this way. We learned that in a STEAM setting, we lost the T and E and discuss the implications of interdisciplinary teaching.

This study investigates technological knowledge among 13-14-year-old girls at a technology-focused summer camp using a Science and Technology Studies (STS) lens. As they are already interested in technology, they attend the camp out of genuine interest instead of ones to become interested. The girls' expressions of technological knowledge are aligned with societal norms associating technology with hands-on engagement and activities, solidifying their self as belonging in technology. While the camp introduced certain gendered assumptions through "girlified" tasks, the girls wished to transcend these stereotypical activities. They wanted to broaden their technological interests beyond the confines of gendered expectations. Actor networks and external recognition influence their technological knowledge, often motivating their engagement in technology. During an interview, the girls voiced dissatisfaction with existing technology education, mentioning uninspiring teaching methods, outdated materials, and a focus on theory. The girls were critical of the technology education they encountered and emphasised the value of practical learning and a longing for real-life applicable skills. Despite some finding technology classes engaging, low self-confidence in comparison to boys emerged, possibly due to teacher expectations. Their inclination towards practical experiences highlights the importance of a well-rounded learning approach. Implications for school technology education curricula underscore the significance of blending theory with practical application to keep technical girls engaged. By embracing girls' perspectives, educators can craft initiatives that resonate with their interests, rejecting the need for gender-specific content. These insights challenge the stereotype that technical knowledge is gender-bound, recognising that girls' genuine interest is an asset

The presented issue of the journal "Pedagogical Dialogue" is devoted to STEM/STEAM education, which promotes the development of students' creative, imaginative and scientific thinking. The content reflects the key ideas of STEAM education aimed at overcoming the detachment of traditional education from the solution of practical problems and building links between academic disciplines that are understandable to students. 

The authors study the issues in the context of the STEAM concept: natural sciences + technology based on mathematical elements and interpreted through art and engineering practices.  How can this interdisciplinary approach be applied at school and embodied in concrete projects? Kazakhstani and foreign scholars and experts from Australia, Azerbaijan, Sweden, USA, UAE and Vietnam shared their ideas. Much attention was paid to the questions: what is the power of STEAM? What makes teaching practice successful? What opportunities does STEM provide for students? How to teach students through art and design? What are the conditions for developing teachers' STEAM competencies? 

This study uses a Bourdieusian framework to determine pre-service teachers' perceptions of technology before their engagement in any formal coursework of a technology education teachers preparation program. The analysis focuses on movies depicting three states of technological capital, revealing a duality between movie narratives and written reflections. These movies underscore a Western-centric perspective on technology, ethics, and social understanding. One film triggered self-awareness among students regarding smartphone use, demonstrating the potential of movie-making for prompting personal reflection. The study emphasises experiential learning through stop-motion movie creation. Moreover, aesthetics emerges as an avenue for students to articulate technological viewpoints, transcending conventional instructional methods. Aesthetic processes unveiled students' technological capital, although effective transformation centres on pedagogical adaptation. The study's methodological integration of storyboards and reflective components gives insights into students' evolving knowledge. The discussion shed light on technology education within the STEAM classroom. Findings show that by embracing students' perceptions and facilitating knowledge expression, educators can contribute to exploring technology's multifaceted role in the educational landscape.

Design and technology is a relatively new subject compared to more traditional subjects, and during its brief existence, it has garnered widespread debate in schools. This book aims to explore some of these debates and challenges the reader with new perspectives about the subject by presenting and questioning arguments about the purpose, content and place of design and technology in the school curriculum. It will encourage the reader to critically reflect on their own beliefs and practices to reach informed judgements and perspectives that will affect how they teach and think about design and technology.

Exploring the major issues that design and technology teachers encounter in their professional lives as well as introducing new topics they may never have considered before, this comprehensive second edition has been fully updated with 16 chapters focusing on emerging and enduring debates:

How do we do race in design and technology? What’s so special about design and technology anyway? What is design cognition in design and technology classrooms? What is the potential of feedback in the creative processes of a design and technology classroom? Does food fit in design and technology? What is the role of making in design and technology? 

With its combination of expert opinion and fresh insight, Debates in Design and Technology Education is the ideal companion for any student or practising teacher engaged in initial training, continuing professional development or master’s-level study.

This study describes a lesson with pre-service technology teachers within a STEAM environment in higher education. During the years we have worked with teacher preparation, we have seen students struggle to understand and define technology. This is also a known issue in our research field. By teaching technology through STEAM, we aimed to promote the students’ acquisition of technological knowledge and encourage thinking about technology. We chose aesthetic learning processes as a basis for this initiative. The concept of aesthetic learning processes has been developed within Scandinavian educational research and is often used in our specific teaching environment. Using clay and stop motion, the students were asked to express what technology meant to them as they manifested this physically. Stop motion is a technique for making films. We analysed the students’ films through inductive analysis, and the results showed us the extent of the technological content. The films were revealing, as the results showed that the students included very little technological content in the films, even though that was the aim of the task. We discovered that neither knowledge in science nor technology transferred into the students’ stop motion films. We had lost the T and E in STEAM. The study's findings can be applied as support in choosing content areas and teaching materials when engaged in interdisciplinary teaching.

Variance in interest and engagement by gender is a complex and long-standing research agendain the field of technology education. Studies report that girls are more reluctant to participate in technology education, less interested in the subject and more negative towards technology than boys. It is argued that specific attitudes and roles hinder girls from engaging in technology education because technology is presented as a predominantly male domain, which fuels ideas about what technological agency is as well as whose interest in technology and what kind of technology are regarded as legitimate. There is, however, the potential to improve female engagement if we can gain knowledge about what girls do during lessons and how they think about themselves when learning technology. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the self-image of girls aged 9 to 12 when participating in primary technology education by using Harding’s (1986) three gender levels: the symbolic, the structural and the individual. The methods used for this study were participant observations during technology classes followed by a focus group interview. From the perspective of Harding’s three levels of gender, the analysis of the the focus group interview reveals that girls confirm the observations an prevailing male norms and conceptions that are linked to what technology is and what it means“to be technical”, despite the fact that the teacher introduces gender-neutral activities. However, there is an ambiguity in our findings because the girls also resist the self-image of not being technical, especially when they work together and have ownership of their work with and learning about technology.

The aim of this study is to review the internationally published scientific literature on the subject of girls engagement in technology education in order to identify the most common descriptions of girls engagement with technology education, girls’ technological activities, and the relationship between girls and technology. After a scoping review of the literature, 20 relevant articles were identified and included in the study; they were analysed using content analysis. The results show that, according to the reviewed studies, girls are less interested in and have less positive attitudes towards technology(education) than boys. They are also less likely to choose a technology- or STEM-oriented occupation. Several of the included studies venture possible explanations as to why this is and refer mainly to cultural factors. Those studies that do define the type of technology used in girls’ activities mostly describe a neutral or male kind of “nuts and bolts” technology. As regards girls’ relationship to technology, there is potential for improving female engagement using apparently simple means, for example, making sure the social context of teaching is adapted to girls. The results of the literature review are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and can be used as a guide for educators and researchers in the area. In particular, the reasons for girls’ lower interest in technology education compared to boys need to be further researched, andresearchers need to study girls in their own right, not in perpetual comparison with boys, in order to come closer to an  it may be that answer.