Middle School Student’s Attitudes Toward Technology in Korea -in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province-

The purpose of this study was to survey attitudes toward technology in middle school students in Korea. To examine students' attitudes toward technology, a survey questionnaire method was used to collect technology attitude data from the middle school students in Korea. The questionnaire was composed of three parts and designed by Lee (2007). The first part of the questionnaire consisted of question about students' knowledge of technology, intended to investigate how much these students know about technology. The second part contained 11 questions pertaining to the demographic characteristics of the students which included their age, gender, grade, and also the students’ home environment. In the third part, 58 questions in total were used to examine the students attitudes toward technology. This part comprised six major components of technology attitudes proposed by Lee (2007): interest in technology, technology as an activity for both boys and girls, perception of the difficulty of technology, consequences of technology, technology in the school curriculum, and ideas about pursuing a career related to technology. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS statistical program version 17.0 for Windows. The major results of the study on Korean Students' Attitudes Toward Technology are summarized as follows. First, it is interesting to observe that overall, when the students' gender was analyzed, boys had more positive attitudes than girls in all categories. Boys had especially more positive attitudes than girls in the categories of interest and careers in technology. Second, when the characteristic of having ‘Technical Toys’ at home was examined, a positive significant effect was found in the categories of 'Role Pattern', and 'Difficulties'. Third, the analysis revealed that the factor of having a working space at home appears to influence positive outcomes with their attitudes toward 'Interest', 'Curriculum', and 'Career Aspiration'. Finally, all students who consider that careers related to technology are legitimate occupations demonstrated more positive attitudes and perceptions related to all categories compared to students without indicating an interest in a technological profession.