In addition to assessing how prepared grade-school students are to take on technical studies in higher education, the test also gages the performance of peoples of different race, ethnicity, gender, public and private schools, and parental education levels. The results from the TEL are shown in the chart on the left.
The test’s questionnaire also recorded how students most commonly find themselves obtaining technical knowledge.
Results show that 52% of students learn and remember engineering and technology principals from taking classes in school;
59% said they sometimes learned about engineering and technology in school;
63% said they learned from family members how to build things, fix things, and how things work.
19% taught themselves
13% reported that they learned from their teachers.
Here is a sample question from the test, regarding iguanas. Scroll to the bottom of the page to try it out. As students click through the interactive module, they need to digest bite-sized information about the scenario and watch a couple videos. A page containing PDFs with results and more information about the test can be found here. Here are more overall results.
