Investigating children's languge in technology education

When undertaking design and technology activities, children are provided with opportunities to create solutions to problems in new and innovative ways. There have been few studies which have looked closely at how primary aged children undertake technology activities and even fewer that have investigated children's language when undertaking a technology task. This paper reports on a research project that focused on children's thinking and also the language that the children used when they were involved in a design and technology activity. The findings suggest that there were several key ideas that the children focused on: the fun of the activity, the satisfaction of completing the task, the difficulty of problem solving and the interest in creating something 'new'.