(777)THE 21ST CENTURY STUDENT: EVALUATING NEW TECHNOLOGYEDUCATION CURRICULUM AND STUDENTS’ ACCESS TOCOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES OUTSIDE CLASSROOM;ANALYSIS ON STUDENT CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AT PRETESTLEVEL

摘要

In 2001, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a four-year grant for the “TECHknowProject”, collaboration for the development of Technology Education standardsbasedinstructional materials. The topics covered in these units includedcommunications, manufacturing, transportation, medical, agriculture and biology,construction, and power & energy. These units were also identified with the Standards forTechnological Literacy, National Science Education Standards, Principles and Standardsfor School Mathematics. In late 2005, twenty units of instruction were published andmade commercially available.In researching the “TECH-know Project” units, these curriculum materials were fieldtestedby a purposeful sample of twenty-two technology education classrooms from nineUSA states. An assessment instrument was developed on each specific unit in order toascertain students’ pre-content knowledge through criterion-referenced tests (CRT)based on core science, math, and technology education concepts and principlesidentified and embedded into those instructional units. These CRTs were developedwithin the course of the project’s expert content development and pilot testing. Aftertreatment, a matching post-CRT followed. According to analysis testing, resultsconcluded that all units of instruction had a significant affect on student’s scores intechnology, mathematics and science content.In addition to the CRTs, a questionnaire was developed and delivered to ascertaininformation students’ access to communication technologies outside the classroom thatincluded personal computers and software, Internet access, video games, and digitalimaging technologies. Results were gathered from 473 students participating in fieldtestingthese new Technology Education curriculum materials.Of the 20 units developed for the “TECH-know Project” this subgroup study focused onfour specific field-tested communication technology units. These four units covered topicsrelated to website development, digital photography, digital video, and desktoppublishing. The four chosen field-tested units incorporated classroom in six states fromboth rural and suburban settings. The samples were designed to have six technologyeducation teachers, one in each State, with three middle school and three high schooltechnology education classrooms, with each teacher field-testing two units, with at least30 students per classroom. These samples provided observations on variables of gender,grade level, teacher influence, and unit of instruction results on the pre-test and post-testassessments of the treatments.The goal of the subgroup research was to investigate and present any observableconnections between students’ pre-course knowledge of the content of the fourcommunication units of instruction and their availability or access to information andcommunication technologies outside the classroom. For this evaluation, analysis ofvariance (ANOVA) tests were performed to achieve a better understanding of pre-contentknowledge and access to communications technologies at home. A portion of thisresearch found that students with access to computers outside the classroomdemonstrated a significant relationship between their pre-content knowledge andunderstanding of the communication technology curriculum. Would further analysis onaccess to communication technologies outside the classroom offer similar significance?These were the goals of this study.