Technical Blindness and the Limits of Artefact Thinking

A STEAM-Based Pilot Study in Teacher Education

Abstract

This pilot study explores whether an iterative noticing-and-reflection activity, supported by children's literature, can help pre-service teachers broaden what they see as technology. Three students in Swedish primary teacher education (grades 4–6) participated in a three-phase sequence that included taking photographs and reading children's literature, with an explicit focus on the question "What is technology?". The analysis examined how participants described technology in terms of (i) function and use, (ii) explanations of how or why it works, and (iii) contextual and ethical considerations. Across the three phases, participants initially tended to identify technology mainly as artefacts, particularly electrified devices. After the seminar discussion and repeated documentation, the photographic examples more often included non-electrified tools and everyday technologies, suggesting a shift in what participants noticed and categorised as technology, which was made visible using a STEAM perspective. Participants' written justifications also moved, in some cases, from naming objects toward brief reasoning about purpose, constraints, and alternatives, while contextual and ethical aspects appeared less frequently. As a small exploratory study, the findings do not support any general claims. Still, they indicate that staying with definitional and boundary questions about technology, in combination with aesthetic and narrative resources, may help future teachers in technology education lead the way out of pupils' technical blindness.