The purpose of this study is to identify the features of technological assessment of “the technology of nurturing living things” among junior high school students. We conducted a survey on the technological assessment of future gene recombination technology among 436 seventh to ninth graders in junior high school. According to the results, the percentage of students’ decision making was as follows: “disapproval” was 48.6%, “approval” was 31.0%, “conflict” was 17.7%, and “undetermined” was 2.8%. In addition, discriminant analysis was conducted on viewpoints of technological assessment that influenced the decisions of “disapproval” and “approval.” Results showed that, technological aspects such as “technological vision” and “effect on the production system” strongly influenced approval decisions. On the other hand, attention to social aspect such as “involvement in environmental issues” and “public opinion” strongly influenced disapproval decisions. From these results, it is suggested that technology teachers focus on the need to deal with the viewpoints of both approval and disapproval decisions according to the characteristics of each grade in the lessons for fostering students’ ability of technological assessment.

In this study, we developed the swinging toys as the teaching materials on technology education. The toy having two arms moves on the inclined overhead rail by two dimensional swinging. The swinging toy moves like the pendulum which pivot point jump alternating between the contact points of two hands and a rail. It continues swinging using potential energy. The students make the toy while repeating trial and error, and learn content of science and dynamics. We improved two legs of the toy to be able to attach the detachable weights, and experimented on the toys in various positions of the weights and various angles of two legs. We analyzed the center of gravity and moment of inertia for each position of the weights and angle of two legs, and considered the influence of the center of gravity and moment of inertia on the movement success rate and the period of swing.

A decrease in the attainment of processing and tool use experience has been observed. Thus, a variety of support is required for manufacturing studies carried out in technology education. Scoring is important work in the early stages of woodworking. Mistakes made in this area are often difficult to repair, as scoring affects the subsequent processing work. Based on the assumption that children are engaging less in woodworking, a “scoring ruler” was developed in this study that is easy to handle for learners who are not sufficiently skilled. The ruler is one of a few improvements to the “square,” and a stabilizer has been added to improve the overall permanency of the work. When using the scoring ruler, work accuracy is improved compared to projects in which the Japanese framing square and square are used.