In the early 1990s, Johnson (1992a) stated that technology educators had shown little interest in cognitive science-based research which he observed was unfortunate because of the close alignment between many concepts in cognitive science and technology education. That may be less true today, but the disconnect between being aware of these concepts and/or terms and teaching students to be able ...

In this paper, the authors first discuss the main rationales of situated cognition and its connections with innovation in teacher education. The challenges that might occur in applying situated cognition in teacher education programs, including insufficient opportunities for cognition apprenticeship, limited social interactions, and constraints in microteaching, are then presented. Correspondin...

To achieve the goal of scientific literacy, besides conveying science and technology concepts, cultivating students’ modeling ability has become important. However, in-service teachers face the difficulty that their teaching load increases while they are still bound by limited teaching hours. Teachers may know of modeling ability, life related content and hands-on activities which are all impor...

In recent years, the VET systems in Germany and Switzerland have been characterised by a shortage of training places which has created a fierce competition for those places among candidates. Nowadays, in Switzerland, almost one out of three school-leaving VET applicants has to wait at least 1 year until he or she secures a suitable place of apprenticeship. Furthermore, the dropout rate in appre...