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When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses on how the affective, cognitive and behavioral attitudinal components of technology education can be incorporated using a two-step survey: the traditional PATT-questionnaire (PATT-SQSE) and the recently developed Mitcham Score questionnaire. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship among the cognitive, affective and potential behavioural components of students’ attitudes toward technology in a Swedish context, using the PATT-SQ-SE instrument including the Mitcham score open items. Results of the analyses show that relationships among the attitudinal components are observable. The results also imply that relationships among the attitudinal components are different for girls than boys. A key factor for the participating students’ attitudinal relations was interest (affective component) in technology education. An individual interest in technology education was related to both the cognitive component and behavioral intention. Another key relationship, for girls, was that the cognitive component had a strong relationship with behavioral intention, which was not the case for boys. Based on the observed relations between the cognitive, affective and behavioural components we have identified two key implications for educational practice: Girls should learn a broader conception of technology in technology education, if we want them to pursue technology-related careers to a higher degree; Students’ interest in technology should be stimulated through engaging tasks in technology education.

A central issue when measuring students’ attitudes toward an object is the children’s understanding of that object, in this case, technology. Studies have shown that schoolchildren often describe technology narrowly as different kinds of technological objects; more specifically, modern electrical objects. This may mean that we have been measuring students’ attitudes toward modern technological objects for more than 30 years. This study intends to research what other aspects students potentially describe, when describing technology, and how the descriptions can be implemented in attitudes toward technology research. To visualize and analyze different aspects of technology, Carl Mitcham’s philosophical framework of the manifestations of technology is used. The deductive method used for analysis quantifies students’ descriptions of technology, for use in attitude, and other quantitative, studies. In this study, descriptions of technology and technology education from 164 students (aged 12–15) are analyzed, classified and quantified within Mitcham’s typology (technology as Object–Activities–Knowledge–Volition). The student descriptions are compared to the typology and students score a point for every one of the four aspects of technology they describe. The sum of aspects in the description is named The Mitcham Score. The results of this study show that students can describe technology in a broad way using all four aspects of Mitcham’s typology. In line with previous studies, the most common way is to describe technology as objects and activities using the objects. Technological knowledge has not been in focus in previous studies of student descriptions. In this study, 44.5% of the students mention technological knowledge in their descriptions of technology. Measurement using the Mitcham Score provides a method to study both students’ concepts of technology and the factors that might affect this. The Mitcham Score is potentially one more factor to use in analyzing students’ attitudinal profiles. The method is sufficiently reliable and enables a broad understanding of students’ attitudes.

Carl Mitcham has recently pointed out that the current approach to the ethics of technology has failed to solve large-scale socio-ethical challenges in the technological world, such as climate change. He then suggests that, in the face of an iceberg of issues regarding technological development, philosophers should recognize the intellectual heritage of the classical philosophers of technology to better deal with the escalating crises that threaten humankind. While Mitcham’s proposal is inspiring, there are several lacunae in his work. In this paper, we contribute to Mitcham’s idea by developing it and filling the important gaps. Our efforts have led to a new style of holistic thinking about the ethics of technology, according to which it is necessary to focus on the system of technologies as a whole (while not ignoring individual technologies, of course) to understand and address issues related to technology development.

Research on students’ perceptions and understanding of technology has shown that students have a narrow view of technology: for example, technology is often manifested in students’ descriptions as artefacts or objects. This study investigates the ways in which students’ understanding of how technology is manifested expands during a series of classroom activities in technology. The study was conducted at a compulsory primary school with eight-year-old students. The data (video and audio recordings) were collected in small-group interactions and in whole-class discussions. In the interactions, the students utilised self-taken photographs to visualise their understanding and perception of technology’s manifestations: object, activity, volition, and knowledge (Mitcham in Thinking through technology. The path between engineering and philosophy, The University of Chicago Press, 1994). Based on their prior knowledge, the students perceived technology as contemporary electrical artefacts. As they engage in a technology project, they develop and expand their understanding of how technology is manifested, as well as relate different manifestations to one another. The findings indicate that students achieve a more advanced understanding of technological manifestations compared to only discussing each manifestation of technology separately.

A poem is presented.

Introducing new technologies to faculty members provides opportunities to reconstruct the ways they teach, evaluate, interact, and communicate. Yet, the personal and organisational perceptions regarding the nature of technology can filter, frame, and guide faculty's interactions with technology. In this case study conducted in a faculty professional development context, we carried out a thematic analysis to explore the technological interpretations in the faculty's definitions of technology. We analysed 32 definitions through Mitcham's technological frames categories, and it was observed that faculty attached various meanings to technology in terms of (1) object, (2) knowledge, (3) activity, and (4) volition perspectives. The role of self-interactions and social interactions in higher education has been discussed regarding the formation of technological understanding.

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 volitional activities, drives, motivation, aspiration, intentions and choice. Subsequently, attitudes towards technology are integral to technology as volition, which is a characteristic of humanity. The use of Mitcham’s philosophical framework is becoming increasingly prevalent in technology education. Mitcham’s framework may have affordances for the current understanding of the perceptions and attitudes of pupils towards technology, which have been researched for just over three decades. It seems that the traditional approach to attitudes may resemble Mitcham’s framework in which technological knowledge (epistemology) and volition are prerequisites for technological activities (methodology), which result in technological objects (ontology). However, this resemblance has not been investigated and determined yet. The purpose of this article is twofold, namely to investigate the alignment of the traditional approach to perceptions and attitudes of students towards technology with technology’s four manifestations in Mitcham’s philosophical framework, as well as the justification for measuring the missing behavioural component of students’ attitudes. The research methodology followed for this conceptual article included a literature review and an analysis of the specific aspects measured by the mainstream Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology (PATT) instruments as well as new, non-related instruments to PATT studies. The specific aspects of the traditional approach, measured by these instruments, are related to Mitcham’s framework. Mitcham’s (1994) philosophical framework yielded fresh insights into the perceptions and attitudes of students towards technology and instruments for measuring these. It was found that the traditional approach to attitudes does resemble Mitcham’s philosophical framework. The mainstream PATT-NL instrument and its derivatives (i.e., PATT-USA and PATT-SQ) were aligned with the traditional approach to attitudes. These instruments have mainly been focusing on the cognitive and/or affective component of attitudes, neglecting the behavioural component. Except for the Human Being and Technology (HBT) questionnaire the closest that other instruments came to ascertaining the behavioural component (methodology or activities) was to measure readiness for action (e.g. the Attitudinal Technology Profile (ATP) questionnaire).

The colleagues of Maralynne Mitcham reflect on her legacy.

A poem is presented.