Technikbegriffe von Kindern und Jugendlichen

Abstract

Neither in the philosophy of technology nor in technology education is there an agreement on the use of the term technology. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is a research desideratum to investigate current empirically knowledge about children's and adolescents' concepts of technology. Consequently, by means of an 'Altersprachlichem-Struktur-Lege' game and a questionnaire, it will be surveyed which subjective ideas children and adolescents express about the concept of technology. The survey will take place in a technical learning laboratory, since a repetitive, constant and manageable offer can be researched there. Here the children and adolescents are not as temporally tied up as in school. Furthermore, two survey As a theoretical basis, philosophical concepts of technology, the findings from psychology regarding concept formation and categorization, the handling of the concept of technology in technology education, the findings on research in outof-school-learning as well as the findings of subject didactics research on imagination will be used. In addition, the current state of research on children's and adolescents' concepts of technology is used as a basis for the research project.The statements of the children and adolescents are evaluated by means of structuring content analysis. The focus lies on the developed category system with which the technology terms of the children's and adolescents' statements are recorded. In summary, it can be stated that no typical technology terms could be identified. The technology concepts of the interviewed children and adolescents differ strongly. Narrowness or breadth of technology, i.e., the extent to which objects or processes or processes with objects are technology, occupies the most space in the children's and young people's statements. Most respondents associate electronic objects with the term technology. The findings are limited in that the sample is not representative of the entire German-speaking area. Rather, they serve as a first approximation and as a basis for further large-scale quantitatively oriented studies. Nevertheless, recommendations for action in general technical education can be formulated on the basis of the literature review and the results of the empirical research.