The latest evaluation indicators of digital literacy are applied to college students to evaluate their level of digital literacy. Evaluation areas applied in this study are roughly classified into ...technical literacy, bit literacy, and virtual community literacy, and each of these has five sub-groups. This paper attempts to analyze the level of effect of these categories and sub-groups on information use behavior. This study used a survey, as did much of the previous research. College students from five different colleges were targeted, with 221 surveys out of 250 returned, a return rate of 88.4%. As to results, bit literacy influences information use behavior most, followed by virtual community literacy and technical literacy in that order. Bit literacy is related to the ability to use information including information search, information discernment, editing information, processing information, and utilizing information, and these items appear to have influenced information use behavior most. Examination of these detailed items shows that the ability to process information has the most significant effect on information use behavior followed by information discernment, information editing, community analysis, document editing, and use of tools and ability to create cyber culture in that order. The literacy indicators with the lowest effect on information use behavior were the ability to communicate, form self-identity, information search, and form relationships in that order.
A pilot research was undertaken in Icelandic schools during the 2013–2014 school year, in order to explore students’ technological understanding and reasoning at the ages of 11 and 13. The survey ...included a questionnaire regarding mechanical movement, power and thermodynamics, while the project considered the congruity between students’ undertakings within Design and Craft education in the national curricula and their ability to understand technology. This article examines the literature and considers the value of technology lessons within Icelandic Design and Craft education, in terms of students’ technological competence. Data was collected using a questionnaire distributed to three elementary schools and is highlighted with the researchers’ reviews of the national curricula. Findings were discussed and conclusions drawn and the results highlighted a general lack of understanding in technology, within the context of students’ daily lives. In addition, there were differences between boys and girls.
In Austria, the syllabus for “Technisches Werken/Crafts and Technology” for all types of school in general education was issued more than 30 years ago. The authors believed that it might lay the ...foundations for technical literacy. The paper is about how the situation of the subject and, with it, technical education has developed since then in Austria. After a brief account of the origin and further development of the carrier subject “Technische Erziehung”/Technical Education various aspects of the present situation of “Technisches Werken/Crafts and Technology” from early years education up to general education are highlighted: the structure and contents of the subject between architecture, design and technology; its significance and the chances of the subject in Austrian schools; the training of the subject teachers. This is followed by the interpretation of a survey of the understanding Austrian pupils have of technology and gender, which was carried out within the framework of the UPDATE-project. The central issues of this study are concerned with pupils’ general awareness of the most important school subjects in primary and secondary schools, specifically of the subject “Crafts and Technology” and of the connection between “Crafts and Technology”, technology and technical occupations.
Après avoir déploré la rareté d’études sur l’articulation entre l’enseignement des sciences et les autres disciplines, l’article examine les positions des acteurs sociaux liés à la crise de ...l’éducation scientifique. Il expose ensuite une liste de controverses et de polarisations liées aux conceptions que l’on a de cet enseignement.
After noticing how few are the publications dealing with the relationship between scientific education and other disciplines, this paper examines how several social agents relate to the present crisis in Science education. It then examines controversies and tensions related to the image teachers have of Science and of Science teaching.
Después de haberse manifestado la rareza de estudios sobre la articulación entre la enseñanza de las ciencias y las otras disciplinas, el articulo examina las posiciones de los actores sociales unidos a la crisis de la educación cientifica. Se expone seguidamente una lista de controversias y de polarizaciones ligadas a las concepciones que se tiene de esta enseñanza.
The author's aim in this chapter is to explore the relationships between technical literacies learned in the stages of a science education and employed at various levels of industry. The data on ...which the discussion is based are drawn from the findings of major literacy research project which examined discursive practices in both these fields. Linguistic and cultural relationships are explored using the tools of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to describe the features of texts collected in industry and school contexts, and Bernstein's (1990) models of relations between the fields of economic production and education in modern industrial societies. These two perspectives enable us systematically to relate commonalities and differences found in the texts to their institutional macro-contexts. The chapter begins with a discussion of the relationships between the stratified production systems of Western economics and the highly stratified outcomes of their education systems. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of technical discourse at each stratum of education and industry. Discursive relationships between the two fields are then exemplified with comparative analyses of written texts from one industry stratum, the skilled operator/vocational level, and the corresponding stage of secondary school science curriculum. The conclusion discusses the functionality of different types and degrees of technical literacy in the reproduction of social stratification, its apparent dysfunctionality in emerging post-Fordist economies and the potential for change that this opens up. The description of industrial and educational contexts is based on research in Australia but is broadly applicable to most Western economics and state education systems. Author abstract, ed
Histories of colonial Latin American mining have cemented the image of a scientifically backward society whose pursuit of easy wealth sacrificed the lives of indigenous and African miners in places ...like Potosí. By examining a mid-seventeenth-century mine dispute between an Andean woman and a Spanish man, this article suggests how legal archives can reveal indigenous women’s contributions to the history of colonial silver. It also provides an appendix with one hundred cases of indigenous, creole, and Spanish women miners, refiners, and managers in Alto Perú, 1559–1801, suggesting how women of different socioeconomic and technical backgrounds participated in the silver industry.
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