Implementing technology education in Finnish general education schools: studying the cross-curricular theme ‘Human being and technology’

In 2009 the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture assigned the National Board of Education with the task of carrying out a nationwide evaluation of all seven cross-curricular themes. The evaluation is one of the largest education evaluation projects the National Board of Finland has ever organised. The present authors were invited to evaluate the theme “Human Being and Technology”. Data were collected during fall 2010 with ninth-grade pupils (the last grade in Basic School) around Finland answering the questionnaires. The questionnaire was completed by 1,181 (both Finnish and Swedish speaking) grade-nine pupils. The main focuses of the study are: (1) pupils’ knowledge about technology, (2) pupils’ attitudes towards technology, and (3) pupils’ activity know-how of technology. It seems that the development of technological ideas has not been implemented at all in HBT cross-curricular teaching, even though this particular section of the cross-curricular theme could have introduced something new and concrete that would steer pupils towards innovativeness and creativity. Paying more attention to this aim would better link visual art and craft education to this cross-curricular theme, particularly since it is only in visual arts and craft studies that learning of innovation processes is given as one of the learning objectives. It is particularly the contents of craft education that refer to the learning of a technological innovation process. The attitudes of youth towards technology and the development of technology were in line with the objectives of the national framework curriculum, yet the wide-ranging utilization and application of technology, let alone the further development of technology, has not been made possible, neither in this particular cross-curricular theme nor in school routines. A positive observation, however, was that the majority of young people understood the connection between technology and manual skills.