“Investigating changes in students’ attitudes toward technology via a STEAM approach involving historical reconstruction”

Abstract

This study examined the impact of an interdisciplinary STEAM intervention, grounded in Project-Based Learning and historical reconstruction, on sixth-grade students’ attitudes toward technology. The program provided contextualized, explicit, and reflective instruction on core dimensions of Technology and was implemented in a primary school in Athens, Greece, with 100 students (aged 11–12) assigned to experimental and control groups. Attitudes were assessed using a pre-post design with the PATT-SQ-SE questionnaire, complemented by semi-structured interviews ( n  = 10) and reflective journals. Robust moderation analyses (ANCOVA with heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors and bootstrap confidence intervals) revealed significant intervention effects across all six attitude factors, consistently moderated by students’ initial performance levels. The positive impact of the program was strongest among students with lower pre-test scores and progressively diminished as baseline levels increased. For high-achieving students, effects were limited, particularly regarding the perceived importance of technology. Qualitative findings converged with quantitative results, indicating that historically grounded, design-based activities fostered engagement and supported more differentiated understandings of technology and its societal role. Overall, the findings suggest that even a relatively brief STEAM intervention can substantially enhance upper primary students’ attitudes toward technology, especially for those with lower initial levels, while highlighting the importance of considering differential effects across learner profiles.