Abstract
Technology educators often provide activities where pupils design programmed technological solutions (PTS) with various programming materials for developing pupils’ technological knowledge related to PTS and digital technology. However, few studies have investigated how pupils experience these activities. To fill this gap in knowledge, this phenomenographic study explores how pupils experience designing a PTS using BBC Micro:bit and identifies the technological knowledge these pupils need, in terms of critical aspects (i.e., aspects necessary to discern), to successfully solve a real world task—the design and coding of a burglar alarm. The data were gathered from sketches, interviews, and video-recordings of pupils aged 10 and 14. This study shows that the pupils struggled with two intertwined phenomena during the activity: the dual nature of the PTS (i.e., the structure and function) and the BBC Micro:bit material. The findings indicated that the pupils needed to understand what components to use based on their function and how to organise these components so they interacted with a code that used feedback control. That is, the pupils needed to code a conditional statement by combining blocks in the BBC Micro:bit editor. To produce working code, the pupils needed to know what the blocks represent, where to find the blocks in the editor, and how to interpret the shapes of the blocks. The results have implications for teaching technological knowledge, suggesting an importance of addressing these phenomena and critical aspects with respect to developing pupils’ conceptual and procedural knowledge related to designing PTS with BBC Micro:bit.
Highlights
Technology education should provide pupils with knowledge to go beyond being uncritical consumers of digital technology and to be able to critically analyse and make wellinformed decisions concerning the digital technology that surrounds them
The results show that even if the pupils were taught with different programming materials such as the BBC Micro:bit and Lego Mindstorms between one or two years, pupils’ understanding of programmed technological solutions (PTS) varied with respect to the two contexts
The two outcome spaces regarding the dual nature of the PTS and the BBC Micro:bit material are individually described
Summary
Technology education should provide pupils with knowledge to go beyond being uncritical consumers of digital technology and to be able to critically analyse and make wellinformed decisions concerning the digital technology that surrounds them. Previous studies (Mioduser et al 1996; Slangen et al 2010) show that when pupils design a PTS with programming materials such as Lego kits, they have difficulties understanding how to program in relation to the function of the components. It cannot be taken for granted that technological knowledge is an automatic outcome of the design process (Svenningsson 2019) In these kind of activities, pupils need guidance from their teacher (Cederqvist 2019; Ivarsson 2003; Lye and Koh 2014; Pea 1983)
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