Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Dissertation

Keywords

Technology--Study and teaching (Middle school)--Taiwan; Teachers--Training of--Taiwan;

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the appropriate content of the Energy and Transportation (E&T) unit for use in instruction in the junior high school Technology Education (TE) programs in Taiwan. Another purpose was to provide the Taiwanese higher education program administrators and educational planners with practical information for use in effectively designing and implementing preservice and in-service teacher preparation programs.

Survey instruments were developed through a literature review and validated by nine experts in E&T. The samples included 400 stratified and randomly selected TE teachers from four geographic parts of Taiwan, 200 stratified and randomly selected industrial managers from four industries, and all 43 industrial technology education faculty in the teacher preparation universities of Taiwan. A 61.43% usable return rate was reached after two follow-up mailings.

Based on the data analysis, 42 E&T content items were identified as being important in 9 categories including sources of energy, energy converters, costs of energy, energy conservation practices, transmission of energy, land transportation, marine transportation, air & space transportation, and careers. A five-point Likert Scale was used to rate perceived importance and perceived knowledge level of each item by the respondents. One-way ANOVAs were used to detect perceptual differences among the three groups. Furthermore, Fisher's Least Significant Difference Procedure at the.05 and.01 level was used to identify the significant differences between any two groups on the items that had been detected by the ANOVAs below the.05 level.

The major conclusions drawn from the study were: (a) The grand mean of 39 out of 42 items were rated as being important or very important. (b) The most important category identified by the respondents was energy conservation practices, followed by careers and sources of energy. (c) Nine significant differences of knowledge level were found between the teacher and manager group, as well as between the faculty and teacher group. However, only three significant differences were found between managers and faculty members. (d) Of the total 42 content items that were rated by the teachers, the average importance level was 3.51 (high) and knowledge level 2.37 (low). This shows a large discrepancy between ratings by the teachers of importance level and knowledge level. The transportation area showed the greatest discrepancy between importance level and knowledge level. The necessity for in-service training of E&T content, based on rated importance and knowledge level, appears to be high.

Year of Submission

1996

Degree Name

Doctor of Industrial Technology

Department

Department of Industrial Technology

First Advisor

John T. Fecik, Advisor

Second Advisor

Charles D. Johnson, Co-Advisor

Date Original

5-1996

Object Description

1 PDF file (ix, 162 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Comments?

Share

COinS