Culture and Technology: Reconfiguring the Attitudes of Pre-Service Science Teachers

Abstract

Pre-service science teacher education faces the challenge of integrating technology in culturally diverse settings, where attitudes toward it shape its educational appropriation. This study analyzes changes in attitudes toward technology among pre-service science teachers at a public university in southwestern Colombia, before and after a teaching sequence oriented toward computational thinking. Using a quantitative approach and a one-group quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design, the Pupils Attitude Towards Technology (PATT) instrument was administered to twenty-five pre-service teachers enrolled in a Natural Sciences and Environmental Education program. Results show statistically significant differences between both observations, a low overall Hake gain alongside a substantial shift in attitudes toward technology-related careers, and a reconfiguration of the underlying attitudes identified through exploratory factor analysis. The discussion reads these changes through a semiotic understanding of culture, arguing that the reported attitudes encode locally meaningful associations between technology and cultural practices such as the Black and White Carnival, agriculture, and the arts. The study concludes that the teaching sequence had a positive, culturally situated effect on pre-service teachers' attitudes toward technology.