Five years construction kits in primary schools

Results and impacts of a project to facilitate technology education - an evaluation study

Abstract

In March 2018, metal construction kits were distributed to all elementary and special schools in Rhineland-Palatinate. They were distributed to all elementary and special schools in Rhineland-Palatinate as part of the MINT project "Technikkiste" (transl.: technology box).

At the end of the year 2018, three more expansion sets with solar cells followed for each school. So far, no request has been made to the schools, even after five years of the project's start made to the schools as to how and whether they use this material.

Therefore, within the scope of this research an evaluation study for the elementary schools in the form of a questionnaire was carried out in July 2023. The study is intended to find out both the current usage behavior with the metal construction boxes as well as to get an impression of the teachers regarding the in-service training measures that took place as part of the project.

921 elementary schools in Rhineland-Palatinate were invited to participate in the online survey. 69 answered the questionnaire some more gave informal feedback. The special schools, which were also supposed to have received the metal construction kits, were left out of the survey, as they are likely to have different usage patterns and therefore a different behavior and would therefore require a different questionnaire.

It is particularly noteworthy that only about 70% of the participants who responded are even aware of the metal construction boxes. Around 30% stated that they were not familiar with the metal construction kits. In addition, only about 43% of the participants indicated that the metal building boxes have ever been used in the classroom at their school. One of the main reasons that participating teachers do not use the metal building boxes is that the school has not received boxes or has too few for classroom use.

This brief excerpt from the survey results already shows that the MINT promotion project is not showing the success that the Ministry of Education had hoped for.