Comparing students' conceptions of technology in a city technology college and a rural comprehensive school

This paper summarises the findings of a study which captured and compared the conceptions of Technology held by students in a City Technology College and a Rural Comprehensive School. The first section provides a brief overview of the methodology which was adopted. The second section reports the major findings of the comparative study. The two student populations cannot be differentiated by virtue of the range of conceptions which one group holds being distinct from those of the other. However; a comparison is made based on the extent to which students in a school tend towards a common conception. The third section considers the learning environment and curriculum of the city technology college in relation to the TEC-Lab project reported by Householder and Bolin (1993) and questions if this influences students’ awareness of technology.