Development of an instrument to measure technology studies teachers' attitudes to environmental and social issues

Abstract

An important issue in the development and implementation of technology education curricula in Victoria is the extent to which environmental and societal issues related to technology are being addressed in the teaching of technology studies. This paper reports on the preliminary phases of a study which is intended to evaluate these aspects of technology education and describes the development of an instrument for use with practising year 11 and 12 technology studies teachers. The instrument sets out to measure teachers' attitudes towards (1) environmental and societal issues and (2) whether such issues should be taught within technology studies, as well as to investigate the extent to which such issues are actually taught in practice. In order to develop the initial version of the instrument, twenty practising technology studies teachers in Victoria were interviewed in order to ascertain their ideas about environmental and societal issues as well as to gather some initial data on the major questions.