Children's choice of drawings to communicate their ideas about technology

This study examines children's choice of drawing to communicate their understanding of the concept “technology”. The study explored whether the children's drawings accurately reflected the depth and range of their understanding of technology in a way that was interpretable by others. Data were collected from 314 primary school children in England and 745 children in Western Australia. Children were invited to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding about technology by responding to a writing/drawing activity and a representative subsample were then interviewed about their responses. About two-thirds of children's responses to the activity included drawings. Children held a wide range of ideas about technology and only rarely was a drawing difficult to interpret. Although overall the drawings reflected the range of children's ideas, sometimes they did not reveal the depth or breadth of an individual child's understanding. Consistent with the ideas represented in the drawings, the interviews found that younger children held simpler ideas about technology, while older children held more complex, and sometimes quite abstract concepts of technology. A notable difference between the two countries was the emphasis on “design and make” and a smaller proportion of no response in the English sample, reflecting the greater length of time technology education has been implemented in England compared to Western Australia.