Browsing by Author "Papadopoulos, Joanna"

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    Pupils' Attitudes Towards Technology – Grade 4 (PATT-G4):  Establishing A Valid and Reliable Instrument
    Papadopoulos, Joanna (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-08)
    Technological literacy is the goal of technology education and in order to attain this goal, students need to be able "to use, manage and understand technology" (ITEA, 2000/2002/2007). Students need to have positive attitudes towards technology and can engage in their technological world. Technological Literacy is an ever-increasing requirement in this 21st Century for students in order for people to engage in their technological world it may well be that we need students to be technologically literate so that we can address these up-and-coming issues. In teaching technology education at the primary level, it is essential to develop valid assessments that gauge student's attitudes about technology so that the results inform policy makers, educators, and curriculum writers to improve the schools' curriculum and advance the teaching of technology education. The purpose of this study was the validation of a modified version of the PATT-USA instrument called the Pupils' Attitudes Towards Technology – Grade 4 (PATT-G4) for use with 4th grade students to assess their attitudes and concepts toward contemporary technology. A literature review reviewing the theoretical frameworks for technology education, the educational shift towards technological literacy as well as best practices for measuring student attitudes and instrument development was conducted. This study was a non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional survey research design which included several statistical tests that were similarly used for the original PATT-USA instrument. Results from the data analysis indicated that students who were enrolled in a technology education program had more positive attitudes towards technology and technological concepts. Furthermore, both boys and girls had very strong attitudes towards the importance of technology. The conclusions and implications suggest that the PATT-G4 instrument should be administered to a larger sample size and different fourth grade populations.
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    Relational Language Improves Preschool Children’s Performance of Analogical Reasoning
    Du, Chenguang; Miyazaki, Yasuo; Cook, Michael; Papadopoulos, Joanna; Hao, Yuan (Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2018-05-08)
    The current study explored how relational language influenced the analogical reasoning among preschool children in China. Children (aged 4.5 and 5.5) in Experiment 1 were asked to complete a cross-mapped task where the object match competed with the relational match. The ANOVA results showed that the performance of both 4.5-year-olds and 4.5-year-olds were significantly improved after they heard Relational Language, F (1, 68) =44.821, p<0.05, η²=0.40. In Experiment 2, different distractors were added to the cross-mapped task and the 5.5-year-olds were replaced by 3.5 year-olds. The results demonstrated that the facilitating effect of Relational Language still existed among the youngest children and the performance of 4.5-year-olds was better than the 3.5-year-olds, F(1, 68)=6.76, p<0.05, η²=0.09. Furthermore, both age groups performed the worst under the distractor condition, indicating that the distractors made analogical reasoning more difficult, especially for the youngest children. Taken together, the current findings suggested that the facilitating effects of relational language in relational reasoning could also be observed in a broader sample.