The development and utilization of a survey instrument to determine the acceptance of national standards for technological literacy

Due to the multifaceted, ever expanding nature of technology education, teachers in this discipline are mandated with covering an ever increasing spectrum of material while at the same time having fewer contact hours for any content area. Over the past six years, practitioners in the field of technology education within the State of Tennessee have been mandated with nearly constant curricular change; the latest being new and revised content standards for technology education, a major change in the curriculum framework from five programs to three, and a new name for the state-wide program. Although the majority of programmatic change was to address the national content standards for technological literacy, the new programs were not correlated with either the programs or grade level content explicit in the standards.;The primary purpose of this study was to determine the level of endorsement of national content standards by technology education teachers in Tennessee. Secondarily, it was to determine the perceived level of need for content specific training to facilitate integrating the standards into the existing curriculum. The study also investigated the perceptions of technology teachers as to (a) the fit of the national content standards within the existing curriculum, and (b) student ability to acquire the content explicit in the standards.;A descriptive design was employed in which self-reported perceptional and demographic data were obtained from technology education teachers in Tennessee through the use of a researcher designed questionnaire. A mailed questionnaire was used for expediency and reduced cost. The questionnaire was an original survey instrument developed by the researcher after a review of the literature failed to reveal any instrument that could be used to collect the requisite data.;Frequencies, percentages, cross-tabulations and correlations were performed. The results showed that the majority of technology education teachers in Tennessee endorsed all of the national content standards. The study also revealed that the majority of technology education teachers in Tennessee perceive a need for in-service training on all of the national content standards with the greatest perceived need in the areas of medical and agricultural engineering technologies.