The Concept of Technology at School: A Specific Professional Knowledge Creation by Technology and Computing Teachers

Abstract

In this article the authors discuss the sense and meanings that ICT teachers have created over time
on the concept of technology, seen as a school teaching category. The study aims at identifying,
characterizing, and interpreting specific professional knowledge created by technology and computing
teachers regarding the concept of technology at school. This is a qualitative research that
interprets data taken from a multiple case study, which surveyed three highly-experienced technology
and computing teachers (two of them with over 10 years’ experience, and one with 30). Twenty-six
observations were registered in audio and video following an observation guide. Other tools used
were a stimulated recall methodology, semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of institutional
documents related to the field.

Regarding the concept of technology, it can be seen that it is a historical construction, product of
school life over time, which is, at the same time, an on-going process of participation and contribution
of technology and computing teachers. This concept must be understood from a knowledge
integration perspective in as much as it synthetizes multiple knowledge models. Thus, the concept of
technology at school is identified with: (a) a critical-reflexive structure for the comprehensive education
of the subject, (b) a historical dispositive of “polysemous reasoning in the field of technology”,
(c) the collective-subjective unit of milieu creation and transformation, and (d) a participation tool
for the factual and procedural knowledge on a daily basis. This view of the concept of technology
represents an integration of a system of ideas that make up the specific knowledge of teachers.
Such integration conforms, beforehand, the classroom as a meaning representative unit; the epistemological principles and the sources of knowledge that support teachers’ actions, as well as a discursive phenomenon of meaning production at school.