Pupils’ Experiences of Technology

The need to ensure that people are technologically literate has become an issue of major significance with an ever increasingly technological world. In order to more clearly understand the various dimensions of techno­logical literacy this book looks at secondary-school pupils’ conceptions of technology and the nature of their interactions with technological artefacts. The book takes a qualitative methodological approach to understanding and describing these experiences. Of key importance is that the empirical data were collected from the perspective of the pupils themselves an important requirement of the methodological framework adopted. There have been many studies around pupils and technology but nearly all are based on a priori categories constructed by ‘experts’ rather than being constituted from the pupils’ perspective. As such this book contributes towards filling a gap in the literature and should be useful to anyone concerned about the current levels of technological literacy in society and who is looking for a framework that can help them to make an impact on improving the levels of technological literacy of young people.