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This study investigates preschool children’s interactions with technology in a Swedish context. The purpose is to broaden our knowledge about children, technology and preschool activities—not only the meanings of technology that is present in everyday preschool activities, but also how children interact with it. Collier-Reed’s (Pupils’ experiences of technology: exploring dimensions of technological literacy, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2006) category system has been used to analyse data generated in two research circles. The participating preschool teachers were asked to present teacher- and children-initiated activities from their daily practices. 54 cases were identified, of which 40 included children’s interactions with technology according to the definitions provided by Collier-Reed. Mapping the results in a matrix representation based on Collier-Reed’s two sets of categorisation systems shows two clusters. The first mainly includes teacher-initiated activities, in which children were instructed how to use different artefacts. The second also includes children-initiated activities requiring more engagement as part of Collier-Reed’s notion of the core. Also, labelling was added to the category system in order to adapt it to the Swedish preschool setting.

Tidigare forskning indikerar att förskolepedagogers beskrivning av teknik som område generellt inte återfinns i förskolans arbete. Här undersöks om ett sådant glapp kan påvisas. Studien har bedrivits som forskningscirklar med 19 förskolepedagoger. Utgångspunkten var en enkät vars resultat beskriver teknik i fem kategorier. Därefter har pedagogerna dokumenterat exempel med tekniklärande för barnen och angett vilken av teknikkategorierna som bäst beskriver tekniken i händelsen. I enkäten dominerade kategorierna att ”teknik är lösning på att problem” och ”processen i vilken artefakter utvecklas”. I exemplen finns omvänt aktiviteter som knyter an till att identifiera artefakter och att använda teknikord och artefakter. Skillnaden mellan pedagogernas beskrivning av teknik och praktiken ger de själva en relevant förklaring till.

Research has indicated that there may be a gap between preschool teachers’ general descriptions of technology and thetechnology content in their actual preschool practices. This study investigates this further and, if a gap is found, looks forpossible reasons for it. The study was conducted in the form of research circles in two Swedish municipalities with 19technology-minded preschool teachers. A mixed research design was used. The starting point for mapping the preschoolteachers’ descriptions of technology was an established questionnaire that placed technology into five categories. Followingthis, the teachers independently documented events at their preschools that they assessed as technology activities. The findingswere that the most commonly chosen category in the questionnaire was technology as a solution to a problem. However, intheir everyday examples the dominant activities related to the children’s attempts to use the artefacts. The preschool teacherssaid that the children had to be introduced to the artefacts, their names and functions, before moving on to more advancedlevels describing technology. There is thus a distinction between the preschool teachers’ descriptions of technology and theireveryday practices, where they themselves provide relevant explanations for the gap.

Technology has been a compulsory subject in the Swedish school curriculum since 1980. However,many primary school teachers say that they do not feel comfortable with teaching technology. Thisoften results in a teaching time that is a (too) small part of the total teaching time of science andtechnology. In addition, studies show that pupils are probably not given equivalent education asthe syllabi may be interpreted in different ways. Against this background, we have conducted threeresearch circles under the guidance of researchers, in three municipalities in the Mälardalen region,addressing teachers working in preschool class to grade 6. Each circle had up to five participants andhad five meetings during one year. Based on the teachers’ own questions and needs we have studieddidactic literature connected to the subject of technology, discussed the syllabi for technology anddifferent forms of teaching support. An existing model for pedagogical content knowledge in technologyhas been used to interpret the activities in the research circles. The teachers experienced and appreciatedthe opportunities to work with the subject content linked to the syllabi for technology andsaw ways to integrate technology with other school subjects.

With more diversified studentgroups entering the university, thedevelopment and planning of coursesbecome more pedagogically challenging.In earlier studies, a validated tool, contentrepresentation (CoRe), has been usedin teacher education to help pre-serviceteachers identify and promote pedagogicalcontent knowledge in limited teachingsequences. In the present research the aimis to explore whether CoRe, when applied toan introductory university course in physics, can (i) promote the pedagogical contentknowledge of the course as a whole and (ii)serve as an operative tool to identify problematicareas or areas that need furtherdevelopment in the course. The CoRe toolis based on given questions to be answeredin relation to the “big ideas” of the course.In the present research, the questions havebeen answered by a lecturer and by usinga content analysis of the answers severalcategories of development could be identified.For a specific category, the tool alsoprovided information about what kind ofdevelopment was necessary. The conclusionis that CoRe has a potential to be ofservice at higher education level, it can beapplied to parts of a course as well as toa course as a whole, and it may provide auseful tool to help a lecturer in the developmentand planning of a course.

A pilot study focused on technological literacy and the nature of technology was undertakenamong 30 Swedish primary school teachers. This research utilised a study-specificquestionnaire based on previous findings and was comprised of 62 items answered by theteachers using a Likert-type scale. The answers were analysed statistically to determineinternal consistency and for further development of the questionnaire. In addition, a group of 6teachers gave their views on why some of the items deviated. The results indicate that, in total,at least 7 of the 14 categories need further development, especially the 5 newly designedcategories covering the critical aspects of technological literacy for which no descriptivecategories were found in previous research. Factor analyses were also performed to exploredata and look for indications of how these teachers’ views of technology can be described.One 3-factor solution covered 2 dimensions (how technology is conceived and interaction withartefacts) as well as one 4-factor solution covering both of these dimensions and backgroundvariables. Although the sample size limits our conclusions, it is evident that some backgroundvariables explain more of the variation than would be possible if the sample had been larger.Even so, the analyses provide valuable input for the development of our ongoing researchproject.

With regards to previous research results on how the teacher’s/preschool teacher’s understanding of a subject effects children’s learning and apprehending of the subject combined with the difficulties for the technology subject to take place in preschool this study aims at investigating how preschool staff (including preschool teachers and day care attendants) describe technology. A qualitatively designed questionnaire was sent out to 139 preschool teachers and day care attendants in a Swedish municipality, whereof 102 answered. The open question about what technology is thought to be was analyzed using a conventional content analysis resulting in nine categories, of which six interrelated hierarchically and one contained answers witch could not be categorized. Thus the result shows eight different ways in which technology is described, from a simple and naive description to a more complex description that implicates a deeper understanding of technology. A majority describes technology according to the latter. The result also shows that it is mainly the preschool teachers who describe technology in a more complex way. Many of the respondents have trouble separating technology from science, and quite a few describes technology as technique, which is another meaning for the word in the Swedish language.

In Sweden the importance of sustainable development (SD) can be traced in political documents from the fundamental law down to the curriculum for different school levels. To investigate how this political objective is demonstrated in knowledge and activities among the teachers, eleven upper secondary school teachers from different subjects have been interviewed to map out their views of SD, their own beliefs and how they teach SD. The interviews have been analysed in terms of content with the Knowledge – Value – Practice model as theoretical frame. The results showed that among the interviewed teachers there existed a spectrum of views of what SD stands for, from a narrow view to a well-developed view. There were also differences in their teaching practice. All teachers stated that teaching for SD is of great importance and that they all did it in terms of their own personal definition. All of them also pointed out that even if the steering documents present SD as important, the local management of the issue is weak. The differences between the teachers’ view of SD and the weak local management generate a fundamental problem. Depending on the teachers’ own definition and content choice the pupils may get different content knowledge, perhaps not even consistent with the recognized definition of sustainable development. The schools cannot therefore be said to give the pupils an equal education in the area of SD.

The problem-solving process is investigated for five groups of students when solving context-rich problems in an introductory physics course included in an engineering programme. Through transcripts of their conversation, the paths in the problem-solving process have been traced and related to a general problem-solving model. All groups exhibit backward moves to earlier stages in the problem-solving process. These earlier stages are revisited by the groups for identifying sub-problems, setting parameter values or even restating the goal. We interpret this action as coming from the fact that the students have not yet developed a knowledge base and a problem-solving scheme. Connected to the backward moves in the process are opportunities for the group members to build such a knowledge base from contributions and experiences from all group members. Problem contents that induce such moves are identified and can thus be considered by science teachers when constructing problems for group work.