391 Validating an instrument for use in assessing the technological literacy of upper secondary school students Melanie B Luckay & Brandon I Collier-Reed Centre for Research in Engineering Education & Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cape Town, South Africa mb.luckay@uct.ac.za, brandon.collier-reed@uct.ac.za In this paper an instrument for assessing upper secondary school students‘ levels of technological literacy is presented. The items making up the instrument emerged from a previous study that used a phenomenographic research approach to explore students‘ conceptions of technological literacy in terms of their understanding of the nature of technology and their interaction with technological artefacts. The instrument was validated through administration to 969 students on completion of their 12 years of formal schooling. A factor analysis and Cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient was conducted on the data and the results show that a four-dimension factor structure (namely, Artefact, Process, Direction/Instruction, and Tinkering) strongly supported the dimensions as developed during the original phenomenographic study. The Cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient of each dimension was satisfactory. Based on these findings, the instrument has been shown to be valid and reliable and can be used with confidence. Introduction Technology education is typically enacted in schools through a subject referred to as Technology (Lewis, 1999). Many claim that the end-product of technology education is technological literacy (for example, Waetjen, 1993). However, there are numerous definitions of technological literacy. Some claim that the definition varies by discipline (Gagel, 1995 & 1997), while others (e.g., Garmire and Pearson, 2006) have argued that the definition can be confounded by socio-cultural context, where the social, cultural, educational and work backgrounds of individuals influence their understanding of technological literacy. The uncertainty in definition implies that technological literacy is open to many interpretations. It is far from straightforward to assess student‘s level of technological literacy - the outcome of technology education. An instrument to quantify a student‘s level of technological literacy might give an indication of how effectively schools develop technological literacy in students and where improvements can be made. However, attempts to assess technological literacy using instruments of this nature have had limited success, primarily because instrument development is affected not only by the fact that technological literacy is a multi-dimensional term, but also that it is questionable whether a single instrument can be used for varying target populations, and importantly, that there is limited literature in the area to support claims. Consequently, instruments currently available are largely influenced by the views and discipline of the authors. Our review of available instruments suggests that these provide disparate information, where one is unable to obtain a ‗full picture‘ of what it means to be technologically literate. Garmire and Pearson (2006) have argued that one cannot administer a generic instrument as the ‗level of technological literacy‘ changes to a particular group, for instance, to adolescents and adults. Nonetheless, a robust instrument to assess technological literacy is generally lacking. The work reported in this article presents the outcome of the development of such an instrument. Theoretical framework In a comprehensive analysis of technological literacy, Dakers (2006) highlights the critical need to engage young people in a new literacy – one in which they can navigate their way Citation: Luckay, M. B., & Collier-Reed, B. I. (2013). Validating an instrument for use in assessing the technological literacy of upper secondary school students. Paper presented at the South African Association of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, Cape Town, South Africa, 391-401.