Student-Generated Visualisations and the Development of Technological Literacy in Technology Education

Abstract

In technology education, knowledge is often communicated through visualisations such as artefacts, models, sketches, and images (Citrohn et al., 2023; de Vries, 2016; Svensson et al., 2019). However, less is known about how student-generated visualisations support students’ development of technological literacy through classroom interactions.

By engaging with student-generated visualisations alongside verbal interactions, students are provided with opportunities to develop technological literacy while gradually advancing their representational competence. This paper theoretically explores this relationship by examining how representational competence functions in students’ meaning-making with visualisations. Representational competence, understood as the ability to use and interpret representations to make sense of and communicate understanding (Kozma & Russell, 2005; Daniel, 2018), becomes visible through work with visualisations in classroom interactions, which provide opportunities to elaborate, negotiate, and discuss ideas about technological issues (Lind, 2025).

Drawing on Kozma and Russell’s (2005) conception of representational competence, this paper proposes an analytical framework for examining how student-generated visualisations are used to express and develop technological understanding. The contribution is thus an analytical framework rather than a finished didactic model, offering teachers and researchers a conceptual tool for analysing how student-generated visualisations can support representational competence and students’ development of visual and technological literacy.