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The availability of digital tablets in preschools has increased significantly in recent years. Literature suggests that these tools can enhance students' literacy and collaborative skills. As society becomes increasingly digitized, preschool curriculum reform also emphasises the subjects of technology and science as priority areas of learning. Teachers' knowledge and experiences are of utmost importance in carrying out this mandate. Few studies have explored the use of digital tablets to teach preschool technology and science in Sweden, and there is an urgent need to ascertain the role of digital aids as teaching tools. This survey study seeks to determine how digital tablets are used to support preschool children's learning in general, and with respect to technology education. Preschool educators (n = 327) across Sweden responded to an online survey consisting of 20 closed and 6 open items that probed the use of digital tablets. Survey results revealed a high degree of engagement with digital tablets in preschools, with activities directed toward various subject-related, social and generic skills. Programming, invention, construction and creation, problem-solving, and design emerged saliently as tablet activities in technology subject areas. Opportunities for providing meaningful learning tasks and digital adaptability were seen as pedagogical benefits of using tablets, but increasing expectations to integrate tablet activities with an accompanying lack of digital skills were expressed as limitations. Teachers' recommendations for future tablet use included defining clearer curriculum guidelines for tablet implementation and adequate training for acquiring digital competence.

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When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses on how the affective, cognitive and behavioral attitudinal components of technology education can be incorporated using a two-step survey: the traditional PATT-questionnaire (PATT-SQSE) and the recently developed Mitcham Score questionnaire. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship among the cognitive, affective and potential behavioural components of students’ attitudes toward technology in a Swedish context, using the PATT-SQ-SE instrument including the Mitcham score open items. Results of the analyses show that relationships among the attitudinal components are observable. The results also imply that relationships among the attitudinal components are different for girls than boys. A key factor for the participating students’ attitudinal relations was interest (affective component) in technology education. An individual interest in technology education was related to both the cognitive component and behavioral intention. Another key relationship, for girls, was that the cognitive component had a strong relationship with behavioral intention, which was not the case for boys. Based on the observed relations between the cognitive, affective and behavioural components we have identified two key implications for educational practice: Girls should learn a broader conception of technology in technology education, if we want them to pursue technology-related careers to a higher degree; Students’ interest in technology should be stimulated through engaging tasks in technology education.

A central aspect of learning chemistry is learning to relate observations of phenomena to models of the sub-microscopic level of matter, and hence being able to explain the observable phenomena. However, research shows that students have difficulties discerning and comprehending the meaning of the sub-micro level and its models, and that practical work in its traditional form fails to help students to discern the relation between observations and models. Consequently, there is a strong call for new teaching activities to address these issues. This paper emerges from a growing number of studies showing that learning is supported when students are set to cooperatively create their own multimodal representations of science phenomena. In this paper, we explore the approach of letting students create their own stop-motion animation as a means to explain observations during practical work. The students’ work of producing a phenomenon in the laboratory and creating an animation was recorded (audio–video) to capture students’ verbal and non-verbal interactions and use of resources. Data was analysed using a thematic content analysis with a deductive approach aimed at identifying the aspects of chemistry content that are being reasoned. The analysis showed that the task enabled students to engage in reasoning concerning both the observations and the sub-micro-level models, and how they relate to each other. The task also enabled students to reason about features of the representation that are needed to make sense of both the observational and sub-microscopic aspects of a phenomenon, as well as reflecting upon the meaning of a model.