Research (continued…)

The Design and Technology (D&T) education research and development activities have so far have involved three interlinked areas.  Firstly, surveys of ideas about technology were carried out among (a) school students using the medium of Posters, and (b) Class 8 and Class 6 students through questionnaires. Secondly, was the development of 3 D&T education units through a collaborative designing approach and their trials among students from 3 socio-cultural settings. The work led to proposing a framework for Design and Technology (D&T) in School Education, outlining its content and pedagogic aspects at different educational levels. As part of this, a study of cognitive aspects in students’ design productions and the study of communication and collaboration among students during the trials of D&T units were conducted. Lastly, the third area involved studies of depictions based on textual descriptions and cues involved two aspects: (a) The depictions of objects and assemblies study began with an exploratory study among adults using a set of tasks developed for the purpose, followed by a study among 60 Class 8 students using a suitably modified set of tasks, which was in turn followed up with an intervention experiment; and (b) the depictions of route maps were studied using a set of three tasks among Class 8 students.