Browsing by Author "Lyytikäinen, Anto"

Technological readiness and -educations has been widely studied in Finland and elsewhere world. Unlike other countries Finland has retained a traditional handicraft in curriculum instead of a technological subject. However technological education is given inside other subjects like math and physics and other natural sciences. Technological society needs competent workers as much as possible and primary school dropouts as few as possible. This thesis is trying to investigate technical abilities of pupils of the flexible basic education. The main Hypothesis is that there are students who has better abilities on average in a technical area. In other word presumption is that there are students in flexible basic education groups who could be underachiever in technological area. In the spring of 2016, 41 students from five flexible basic educational groups from Helsinki metropolitan area took part in this research. Students were 14–16 years old. The data was collected using three different tests which are measuring three dimensions of a technological competence; psychomotor skills, cognitive and affective areas. These three areas to construct a student's technological abilities. The data was analysed by using SPSS finding correlations, averages and differences between groups. In addition, results were compared with the larger data from others research. Results show that the flexible basic education groups fared slightly less well in cognitive and affective field that control groups. Results of the psychomotor skills were on average or a little beyond on average. The Individual level seven students got points over the average in all three tests. Results supports the idea of the technology based flexible basic educational group to students with special needs and students who have a motivation problems.