**6. Technical kits as material didactic training tools**

On a general level, kits can be characterised as a set of objects whose purpose is to be assembled and combined into arbitrary or strictly defined wholes, forming objects which can then be disassembled.

Technical kits perfectly fit into this definition, but how do they work in the context of teaching? What is the situation with their inclusion in didactic training tools [2], i.e. material didactic training tools? Generally speaking, such material didactic training tools can be divided into training aids and didactic technical equipment. Technical kits can be categorised not only as training aids, but also as a system of didactic technical equipment, especially if they are combined with a control computer.

Attitudes towards the use of the term "training aid" J. Drahovzal et al. [32] and P. Bohony [33] have been varied and not always clear. Considering the aim of this study, let us endorse the definition formulated by A. Hašková [34] or J. Pavelka [35]: "A training aid is such a material didactic training tool whose didactic functions facilitate a more effective attainment of the teaching's goals and which serves as a prerequisite for meeting guidance/education goals."

From the perspective of fundamental pedagogical categories, training aids rank behind *goal – content – methods* [32]. This does not mean, however, that their role is marginal. Over the course of schooling, the educator temporarily objectifies one of his or her functions by using training aids, in fact. Objectification can be understood as an intentional transfer of a function, characterised by a typical subjectivism, to a technical system which guarantees its objective and standard nature [32].

According to A. Melezinek [36] *training aids* (especially those of a technical nature) can be divided into *non-adaptive* ones which are related to a one-way communication, i.e. the educator to the educated, and *adaptive ones*, involved in a two-way communication that includes feedback. This division is not strictly defined (**Figure 2**).

In this respect, A. Melazinek [36] mentions the term *technology of teaching* which describes the aggregate of all technical devices and systems used during schooling, one of them being electrotechnical kits. This issue is further elaborated by A. Hašková [1].

**Figure 2.** *Training aids classification.*

In the guidance-education process, training aids can be rationally used as [32]:


Clearly, training aids are a prominent link in the process of creating knowledge and verifying its validity, but their content, form, and presentation in education also affect the overall formation of the pupil's personality and encourage them to fulfil their current and perspective tasks and goals.

When dealing with the issue of updating the teaching management process, especially from the perspective of *humanising the education system*, it is necessary to ask: "In the teaching process, what kind of training aids (i.e. technical kits, too) should make up the indispensable foundation of the school's methodical equipment?" To answer this question, we will further delve into the classification and categorisation of training aids whose content differentiation and concretisation can be based on the following perspectives:

• incorporating electrotechnical kits into education drastically changes the way an educator works. The share of "living labour", which has been a prevailing factor in their work up until now, decreases. In terms of the replaceability and irreplaceability of the so-called living labour, traditional education can be compared to the "manufactory" period of technical development when viewed from the

perspective of modern production. Such replaceability manifests itself wherever an activity does not require one to directly participate in managing the process of guidance/education;

• in the interest of improving teaching's effectiveness as a whole, it is useful to relieve the educator of all activities of a non-creative nature (e.g. the evaluation of didactic tests, homework, practice, etc.). Such activities can be automated, or mechanised and ceded to didactic technical equipment (on the basis of a continuous feedback registered by a programme or a feedback device).

There is a manifest trend in the process of managing education to implement a socalled automated teaching system which, in regard to teaching with electrotechnical kits, consists of [28]:


An education management programme can be viewed as a general principle, i.e. a methodical algorithm for the sequence of the educator's and pupil's didactic activities which facilitates the objectification of learning's basic functions and the effective management of the guidance-education process L. Zormanová [37] which includes, among other things, operating technical kits. An education algorithm, differentiated with respect to the basic groups of pupils who take part in the education process, is a fundamental element.

Material tools act as a catalyst in the educator's hands and change into tools of modern communication, of managing and regulating learning activities. They can effectively contribute to the development of the creative activities educators and pupils engage in, as long as they are used in a methodically correct fashion.

The contemporary development of training aids is heading towards a gradual formation of a complex communication system in practical education. Through this system, the connection between humans and technics will be established more quickly and most of all more easily.

Every training aid (i.e. electrotechnical kits as well) can work not only as a carrier of information, but also as its communicator. It can evoke the dynamism of the cognitive process in relation to didactic activities. At the same time, it can influence the emotional and volitional sphere of the pupil's personality development to a different extent. The so-called "pedagogised aids", i.e. objects adjusted to didactic purposes (e.g. a methodical use of an electric motor section) are also more illustrative.

In the education process, electrotechnical kits are used as a tool to meet education goals, thus facilitating interactions between the educator, pupil, and electrotechnical

#### **Figure 3.**

*The communication structure of frontal education with the use of technical kits.*

kit. Such interactions take place in different ways – verbally, non-verbally, by means of activities, etc. **Figure 3** shows the communication structure of the entire system where communication flows between the system's individual elements.

Obviously, education can become effective when the educative potential of technical kits is applied and harnessed, but technical kits themselves do not guarantee effective education.

These two perspectives also need to be employed when choosing technical kits. In this case, the technical viewpoint must be made subordinate to the need in order to emphasise the important aspects of a demonstrated phenomenon, for the experiment to be illustrative and clearly arranged, and to provoke pupils' thinking.

Training aids, and thus technical kits as well, are characterised by a close relationship to the content of teaching. In the education process, aids directly affect the pupils' learning activities by their didactic functions and become a part in the transmission channel between the educator and pupils.

#### **7. Pupils as users of technical kits**

Pupils and the educator participate in the education process, constitute an active force in educational activities, and at the same time are their own guidance operators. The quality of the educational influence's results also strongly depends on the internal prerequisites of the educator's and pupils' personalities, as well as on the quality and intensity of their mutual interaction.

A pupil's personality goes through different stages of development, changes. In each age span, it gains certain characteristics which are typical for the given period and age group. These age-related particularities need to be respected in the education process, too [38] – this naturally fully applies to the relationship with technical kits.

The personality of the person being educated cannot be perceived in isolation as a passive object of our influence. Each individual perceives and receives stimuli from the external environment in a unique, different fashion, and also reacts to them in diverse ways. He or she affects the external environmental factors in return, influencing, shaping, and remoulding them. This active influence, however, is directed not only towards stimuli from the external environment, but towards oneself. Over time, a pupil becomes a self-regulating agent who sets autonomous goals, imposes tasks on themselves, and decides how to achieve them. The ability of autoregulation and self-education should be one of the chief aims of the education process.

Different children perceive school education differently: there are big disparities, both from the perspective of psychological and physical development. In the guidance-education process, the individual being educated is not isolated but has diverse relationships with the other elements in their environment. At the same time, though, it must be stressed that playing is an activity in which children engage from a very early age and which satisfies their inner needs. All objects they play with, i.e. objects whose shape, composition, and purpose are adapted to the purpose of children's games, help them express their ideas, dreams, and wishes and develop their skills or abilities. The educational significance of toys lies in the expansion and enrichment of a fundamental children's activity – playing – in coexistence with the universal development of their personality.

Activities with a prevalence of physical exercise constitute a significant part of a pupil's day. In pre-school age, they result in the development of basic manual skills. According to E. Takáčová [39], children and playing are two terms which have been associated with one another from time immemorial. As the child's ability to navigate the outside world increases, so does the manner of their playing. Toys open the door to the world of children's games. Children's toys can be evaluated from three basic perspectives which apply to electrotechnical kits as well:


Nowadays, toys and games of diverse types are a part of daily life, positively shape one's personality, and are a means of developing one's technical and artistic expression.

Insight gained from brain research shows that the left hemisphere, characterised as verbal and rational, is dominant for speech, while the right one is emotive, nonverbal, intuitive and controls, among other things, emotions, holistic processes, one's global worldview, spatial perception and orientation. In childhood, a pupil's right hemisphere is more mature than the left one, which is why functions controlled by the right hemisphere prevail in the child's psychology. According to J. Brierley [40], there are apparent differences between the activities girls and boys engage in. On average, all left-hemisphere-mediated speech functions are slightly more advanced in girls than in boys of the same age. In case of boys, non-verbal spatial functions, mediated by the right hemisphere, and ability to conduct spatial work with patterns and shapes are more developed. Actually, boys as young as two perform better in this area. It follows, then, that boys excel in examining things, which is a crucial factor in natural or technical sciences, a fact that is significantly affected by the selection of and preference for the materials and equipment used in schools. This is exactly where kits come into play. By incorporating them, we introduce an element of playing into

#### *Illustrative Techniques in the Primary School DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100568*

the guidance-education process (E. Roučová [41] mentions the term "technical toy" which denotes a certain technical object or several of its technical elements).

Playing with kits can have an immense educational effect on children. To undergo cognitive development, a child needs to have toys that develop psychological functions: perception, memory, imagination, thinking. Kits fulfil this precise requirement. When a pupil observes, perceives, and acquires new information or knowledge, they are encouraged to construct and model, study the principles, etc. All of these activities force them to think, draw on their existing knowledge, rely on their imagination, and most of all create new things while learning how to evaluate.

The process of acquiring skills and habits has three stages [38]:


Skills and habits are formed and perfected when complex conditioned responses emerge and become reinforced. That is why there are three stages of motor and sensory skills which lead to the acquisition of habits [38]:


Applying these phases and stages to the guidance-education process (generally) results not only in the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also in a heightened awareness of work organisation, hygiene, and occupational safety, as well as in the formation of a worldview and future occupational orientation. In particular, children can use technical kits to learn effectively which allows such kits to be included under the work term "*didactic toys*".

Technical kits develop not only technical skills, but also social relationships. According to J. Daněk and M. Šmejkalová [42], construction almost always forces pupils to cooperate, communicate with one another, and exchange elements they need in order to complete a project. Pupils share their experience when working together. Working with any kit in schools is challenging not only in terms of organisation, but also of thinking and technical imagination. That is why kits are viewed as a toy which greatly affects the development of children's thinking and is notable due to its high formative value. Playing with kits also frequently works as a tool of socialisation.

### **8. Technical kits and the technical creativity of pupils**

In relation to the issues described above, it is useful to talk about creativity, in this context namely about technical creativity. Defining "creativity" has been a point of interest for many scientists. They are not united in their views – there are many definitions which try to describe this term [12, 43, 44]. For our text, the following will suffice: "*creativity is a human ability based on cognitive and motivation processes where inspiration, imagination, and intuition are also involved to a great extent. It manifests itself in coming up with such solutions that are correct, and at the same time new, unusual, and unexpected*" [45].

In technical vocational education, creativity is conceptualised as part of the general creativity that is taught, although there are of course some specific disciplines where the creative process is indirectly or peripherally involved in teaching (example: electrical engineering versus economics).

The concept of creativity can be narrowed down to technical creativity, i.e. creative technical activity, then we mean basic technical skills, technical communication skills (verbal and graphic), the ability to use working tools or devices and then apply them in technical and non-technical practice. Closely related to the above is the notion of technical fitness, which is the ability to perform work movements as a result of coordination between the relevant muscle groups and between muscle action and thinking.

If pupils are encouraged to be creative, then creativity is an organic part of education that enhances working skills, influences social relationships and facilitates the overall development of the pupil's personality. According to J. Hlavsa [46], the goal of guiding pupils to creativity should be precisely the formation of their creative personality with regard to effective work activities, self-formation and optimization of social behaviour. Identification of the interconnection of creative activities with vocational education creates conditions for the development of creative technical thinking in pupils. Y. K. Michael [47] states that the basic characteristics of creative technical thinking are originality and independence.

Keeping to J. Hlavsa [46], we can state that the creative thinking of pupils is a mental process characterised by self-reliance and the ability to recognise and solve unknown matters based on what has already been recognised.

As has been said here several times, the creative process accompanies all activities of a creative nature, especially those of a technical nature. Working with technical building blocks can serve as a model example of the development of the creative process in terms of creative skills and the application of creative technical thinking. According to A. Marszałek [48], the creative process can be divided into four basic stages with regard to technical subjects:

