Lena Gumaelius

KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Learning

Spatial ability has been demonstrated to be a significant predictor of students’ achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. While several studies have focused on offering supplementary or isolated spatial training interventions, this study focuses on spatial ability development through embedded interventions within...

There exists a plethora of studies that have related pupils’ spatial ability to their academic achievement and problem-solving skills, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. However, little is known about how spatial ability could be presented in a national curriculum. To increase the awareness and intentio...

Extensive research has established that spatial ability is a crucial factor for achieving success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). However, challenges that educators encounter while teaching spatial skills remain uncertain. The purpose of this study is to develop a research framework that examines the interrelationships,...

Spatial ability has been shown to have a causal relationship with students' success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. While an abundance of research has investigated how spatial ability development is and could be integrated to science, engineering, and mathematics curricula, little attempt has been made to date...

Technology education internationally has for some time struggled to achieve continuity between what is depicted in policy and curricular documents and the reality of day-to-day practices. With its focus often articulated through the nature of activity students are to engage with, technology teachers are recognised as having significant autonomy in...

Background Given the disparities in gender representation, efforts are needed to make engineering education more inclusive and attractive to young people. It is important that those entering engineering education are making this decision with sufficient understanding of what it means to be an engineer. This study explored how lower secondary educat...

There is a recognized need for research on how to teach computer programming in primary schools in Sweden grades 4–6 (10–12-year-old pupils). Studies of teaching show the importance of teachers’ knowledge of content and pedagogy and how these two parts affect each other (i.e. pedagogical content knowledge [PCK]). Most teachers in Sweden have little...

This pilot study explores engineering students' motivation for learning and studying through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Five postgraduate students from a research-intensive Swedish university participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews about their study experiences from different Challenge-Driven Education (CDE) courses...

This work spotlights the experiences from ten years of implementing sustainable development in all educational programs at a technical university. With a focus on the critical issue of involving more academics in the work, experiences are shared through an ethnographic account including focus group interviews. ‘Sustainable development’ has been per...

A number of key graduate outcomes related to industry-based interventions and work-industry-related activities (WIA's) are specified by the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance for all Engineering Degree Programmes. A paucity of research regarding student perceptions of these WIAs and their role in student's motivation for learning motivates the curr...

Understanding the factors that impact learners with respect to their academic achievement is critical for enhancing educational provision, and the nature of these factors can vary widely. They could be, for example, cognitive, conative, physiological, or physical. With increased understanding of such factors teachers can better meet learner needs....

Design is core element of general technology education internationally. While there is a degree of contention with regards to its treatment, there is general consensus that the inclusion of design in some form is important, if not characteristic, of the subject area. Acknowledging that design is important, there are many questions which need to be...

Males are generally overrepresented in higher education engineering. However, the magnitude of this variance differs between countries and engineering fields. Evidence associated with the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis suggests that perceptions of intelligence held by actors within engineering affects the engagement of underrepresented g...

This Work in Progress paper describes considerations relative to the development of a follow-up exploratory quantitative design for examining student motivation in higher engineering education. The intent of the current work is to build on the outcomes of a previous qualitative study exploring the perceptions of students with regard to work industr...

Teachers’ teaching practice plays a key role in the learning process of pupils, and for teaching to be successful, teachers must have knowledge in many different fields. This obviously also applies to teaching the subject technology. However, lower secondary school technology education in Sweden has reportedly been described in terms of teaching no...

The urgent need for actions in the light of the global challenges motivates international policy to define roadmaps for education on all levels to step forward and contribute with new knowledge and competencies. Challenge-Driven Education (CDE) is described as an education for Sustainable Development (ESD) approach, which aims to prepare students t...

This full research paper aims to investigate the nature of industry-related activities engineering students encounter at a Swedish university, as well as the impact these activities have on their motivation to study engineering. Over the last decade, many studies have been conducted concerning university-industry engagement which chart the landscap...

In Sweden, there have been multiple large scale interventions to support compulsory school teachers generally and within specific subjects. Due to the costs associated with such interventions it is critical that interim evaluation measures exist which can indicate potential success. Additionally, evaluation measures which can measure the actual imp...

In this paper a framework of key competencies for sustainability defined by UNESCO is used to evaluate the relevance of the CDIO Syllabus for promoting engineering education for sustainable development. The evaluation is performed in two steps. First, topics, terms and concepts in the CDIO Syllabus that corresponds to the different UNESCO key compe...

This paper establishes a theoretical position from which to analyse and reason about the difficulties associated with closing the gap between the provision of engineering education in universities and the needs of society. Broadly speaking, the disparity between societal expectations and university graduate profiles highlights that despite achievin...

Women are significantly underrepresented in engineering and engineering related disciplines. One area where this is clearly illustrated is in the percentage of females enrolled in higher education engineering courses. The 2016 data on enrolment by field from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that the maximum pe...

Gender representation in technology and engineering education is generally not equitable with females being underrepresented in many areas (e.g. Sultan, Axell, & Hallström, 2018; Yoder, 2017). While there are many perspectives on gender representation in technical fields, from the perspective of advancing engineering and technology as disciplines,...

Programming was introduced as a core-content in the Swedish national curriculum during a 2018 revision. The introduction of programming as part of Technology and Mathematics has been surrounded with a lot of questions of how, when, what and by whom programming should be taught. It is acknowledged that teachers do not often have the content expertis...

Like many areas of curricula internationally, technology education has encountered difficulties in achieving continuity between the rhetoric of prevailing policy and the reality of enacted practices. In technology education, the conceptually oriented nature of curricular goals is theorised to play a significant part in influencing this relationship...

Since first conceived, the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has attracted much attention. Despite being lauded by educationalists as the unique knowledge base of teachers, research on the concept over the past 30 years has yet to result in a universally accepted definition being presented. Much of the contentions surrounding the lack...

This paper problematises the current status of technology education on curricula internationally. Contemporary understandings from the philosophy of technology are used to depict how technological knowledge differs from more conventional knowledge bases, leading to questions of how technology education can be compared to other areas on the curricul...

This full research paper approaches the teaching of STEM from a new multidisciplinary perspective. While the importance of the STEM agenda is not in dispute, the plurality in treatment of STEM as individual subjects or disciplinary areas of study potentially limits the evolution of a new conception of STEM education. In this paper, determinist disc...

This paper contributes with a north-south perspective on the ongoing enhancement of engineering education for sustainable development by giving insights in and results from implementation of challenge driven education (CDE) through joint efforts by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and other African partn...

Since first conceived, the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has attracted much attention. Despite being lauded by educationalists as the unique knowledge base of teachers, research on the concept over the past 30 years has yet to result in a universally accepted definition being presented. Much of the contentions surrounding the lack...

The Technology subject in general post-primary education is unique based on its conception and treatment of knowledge. The task specific utility of knowledge is emphasised and at the same time, in reflection of the breadth of technology in society, the variance in the context of learning tasks can be quite large. The subject is considered to have a...

Hartell, E., Buckley, J., Gumaelius, L., Doyle, A., & Seery, N. (2018). Arbeta med komparativ bedömning (Working with comparative assessment). Skola & Samhälle. http://www.skolaochsamhalle.se/flode/skola/eva-hartell-m-fl-arbeta-med-komparativ-bedomning/

Successful teaching and learning require teachers to have knowledge within many different fields. Since what pupils learn depends on the teachers’ knowledges and skills, it is of interest to further examine teachers’ competences. Based on interviews with four experienced teachers this study explores how they describe their teaching and what knowled...

Successful teaching and learning require teachers to have knowledge in many different fields and therefore the understanding of teachers’ knowledgebase is of interest. In Sweden the debate about the role of teachers and teachers’ knowledgebase has been ongoing for some years. This study focus to further develop the understanding of teachers’ views...

The philosophy and epistemology of technology education are relatively unique as the subject largely focusses on acquiring task specific relevant knowledge rather than having an explicit epistemological discipline boundary. Additionally, there is a paucity of intelligence research in technology education. To support research on learning in technolo...

Since 1993, Swedish technical universities have engaged 15-year-old students and their teachers in the annual tournament “Teknikåttan” (technology for students in school year eight), which is aimed at increasing students’ interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, as well as at making them aware of career possibil...

Since the 1990s, the low number of students choosing to study science and technology in higher education has been on the societal agenda and many initiatives have been launched to promote awareness regarding career options. The initiatives particularly focus on increasing enrolment in the engineering programmes. This article describes and compares...

In recent years, the issue of students’ knowledge and interest in science and technology has attracted the attention of several international studies (e.g., PISA/OECD, ROSE, TIMMS). Findings from these studies have influenced debates about education in general and about STEM subjects in particular (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)...

Probably we would not know about pre-university (or K-12, in USA terms) engineering education if there had not been the discussion about STEM education. STEM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The term started its existence as a rather political term in the mid-2000s.

Pre-university engineering education has become the topic of increasing interest in technology education circles. It can provide content for the E in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, which is in the interest of technology educators at different educational levels as it builds the bridge between them and the science...

This study explores possible differences in the views on assessment between two groups of teachers teaching technology in compulsory school: (1) teachers with subject-specific teacher training in technology education; and (2) teachers without such training. This topic is of particular interest because of the recent changes in the regulations that g...

The purpose of this paper is to identify faculty approaches to working life issues in engineering education. The paper focuses on faculty attitudes towards working life issues and their integration into the curriculum and on activities related to working life introduced to the curriculum. We used a mixed methods approach and performed a survey and...

This laboratory experiment introduces rocket science from a chemistry perspective. The focus is set on chemical propulsion, including its environmental impact and future development. By combining lecture-based teaching with practical, theoretical, and computational exercises, the students get to evaluate different propellant alternatives. To comple...

Nakivubo wetland, which has performed tertiary water treatment for Kampala city for the past 40 years, is ecologically stressed by agricultural and infrastructural developments. Field studies were carried out to assess the hydraulic loading, pollution profile, stability and water quality of this wetland. The upper and lower Nakivubo wetland receive...

The objective of this study was to set-up a pilot plant and to evaluate its effectiveness for biological nitrogen and organic matter removal from tannery wastewater in Ethiopia. A pilot wastewater treatment plant consisting of a predenitrification-nitrification process was constructed and operated for 6 months. This was fed with a raw tannery waste...

In order to identify potential microorganisms with high denitrifying capacity from tannery wastewaters, 1000 pure cultures of bacterial isolates from Modjo Tannery Pilot and Ethio-tannery wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), in Ethiopia, were investigated. Twenty-eight isolates were selected as efficient denitrifiers. These were Gram-negative rods,...

The treatment efficiencies of constructed wetlands containing Cyperus papyrus L. (papyrus) and Miscanthidium violaceum (K. Schum.) Robyns (synonymous with Miscanthus violaceum (K. Schum) Pilg.) were investigated in a tropical climate (Kampala, Uganda). Papyrus showed higher ammonium-nitrogen and total reactive phosphorus (TRP) removal (75.3% and 83...

A treatment plant using conventional biological treatment combined with hydroponics and microalgae is constructed in a greenhouse in the area of Stockholm, Sweden. The treatment plant is built for research purposes and presently treats 0.559 m3 of domestic wastewater from the surrounding area per day. The system uses anoxic pre-denitrification foll...

To find a biomarker for denitrification in activated sludge, five denitrifying strains isolated from three wastewater treatment plants were studied. These strains were selected from among 1,500 isolates for their excellent denitrifying properties. They denitrify quickly and have no lag phase when switching from aerobic to anoxic conditions. All str...

The change from brominated flame retardants to nonhalogenated alternatives has started in the electronics industry. Information about toxicological aspects concerning the involved chemicals is however limited. This study shows that one nonhalogenated alternative has lower toxicity than the brominated flame retardant TBBPA, when tested for inhibitio...

Three pure culture assays for measurements of inhibition of the nitrogen removal process were tested and compared. The methods were performed using pure cultures of bacteria responsible for three reactions; ammonia oxidation, nitrite oxidation and nitrite reduction. The inhibition caused by 48 samples of industrial wastewater was determined and the...

Laboratory experiments have been conducted to characterize the sensitivity of a pure-cultured denitrifying bacterium from wastewater sludge, selected by virtue of its exhibiting promising qualities as a biomarker, to wastewater process variables and potential toxic inhibition by a heavy metal, cadmium. A pure culture method offers the possibility o...