Teknikens värld- flickors värld: : en studie av yngre flickors möte med teknik i hem och skola

Sammanfattning: The thesis focuses on our society's great need of technical competence. Even though the prospects for the future are very good, research shows that teenaged girls often express a negative attitude towards technology. The question is whether girls in the earlier school years also express a negative attitude towards technology. In this thesis twent-six girls from two schools were followed throughout their first five school years. Regular technical education was offered in only one of the two schools.The study's aim is to observe the girls' experiences and actions in their confrontation with technology at home and in school, and to try to explain and understand the girls' action when faces with technical tasks. The focus is on the girls as individuals - how they talk, think, and experience the confrontation, and how they act when faced with technical tasks. The issue of how the girls interpret their technical abilities - how they learn that they "can" or "cannot" deal with technology is examined. With the aid of a survey model,the main features in this learning process, as well as where in the process the girls in the study are when the study ends (fifth year), are described.The theoretical basis for this thesis is Georg Henrik von Wright's theoretical model of the logic of events. The logic of events as an explanatory model is based on the individual's intentions (von Wright identifies four intentions: wants, duties, ability and opportunity) and on the situation (the historical context) in which the event takes place. Since the study includes a pedagogical context, there was a need to expand von Wright's intention concept. Therefore two pupil-specific intentions are introduced in the thesis: the intention of concession (concessivity), which is meant to describe how the pupils handles her subsidiary position (the degree of consent on the pupil's side), and the intention of curiosity.Results show that the girls in the study, with few exceptions, express great interest in technology and technical tasks. Results also emphasize the significance of how the girls define the concept of technology, and the technical experience the may have had. Here technical education at school is shown to be an effective way to offer girls the opportunity to build up a "technical identity".