Technical Interest : Does earlier technology education influence the choiceto further studies in technical subjects?

Abstract: This thesis investigates if a student’s interest in technology at lower secondary school can influence their choice to attend an upper secondary school technical program (Teknikprogrammet). Factors like the choice of course book, teacher, practical and theoretical technology were investigated. For example, the frequency of course book use during the education and how many students that used a course book. The differences between female and male students was specially investigated. The study was performed by a web form that was sent out to 145 students at first year Teknikprogrammet. Quantitative analysis was done on all the questions except the open-ended questions, where a qualitative analysis was used. Results show that approximately half of the students did not think technology in lower secondary school had much effect on their choice to select Teknikprogrammet in upper secondary school. Male and female students did not like technology much in lower secondary school, and there was no difference between genders. Approximately half of the students said that lower secondary school effected their choice of Teknikprogrammet, at least a little. None of the things specifically looked at had any special effect, like the book used and more than half of the students did not have a course book at all. When looking at the open-ended questions the students’ interest seemed to lie in the technique that they were going to study, like computers, programming and games. The lower secondary school technology did not have much influence. That the students did not seem to like the Technology education was not correlated to the amount of theoretical versus practical education they have had.