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Introduction 2004 |
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| Technology
is a creative, purposeful, multidisciplinary activity aimed at meeting
needs and opportunities through the development of products, systems
or environments. Knowledge, skills and resources are combined to help
solve practical problems within particular social contexts. Its extensive
cross-curricular possibilities reflect its vast pervasiveness throughout
the world in which we learn and live as individuals, groups and societies. To attempt to represent all or even most of the areas, meanings and applications of technology within the national monitoring assessment programme would be unrealistic. After careful examination of the scope of the technology curriculum, it was decided to assess some key aspects. Selected areas of content and broadly overlapping contexts (e.g. personal, home, school, community) have been chosen as means of investigating the processes students use and the ideas they have. This chapter reports the results of 20 technology tasks administered to individual students in Mäori immersion settings. Nine of the tasks were administered in one-to-one interview format and eight were attempted in stations format. The remaining three tasks were administered in a team or group situation. National monitoring results are reported task by task so that results can be understood in relation to what the students were asked to do. Ten of the 20 tasks, however, have been designated link tasks, in order to allow comparisons of performance between the 2004 and later assessments. Performance data for those 10 tasks is presented in this report but the tasks are described in general terms only. Many students identified some key issues in the technology tasks, but tended to give little attention to more subtle or technical issues. Their answers commonly lacked detail and elaboration, especially when asked to give explanations. |
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