Application of the Grounded Theory to the analysis of the school and curricular organization of the subject Technology in Secondary Education

Technology is a cross-cutting subject of knowledge and skills in the Secondary Education curriculum. Its curricular content demands constant changes due to the requirements posed by society and educational laws in Spain. This article presents a qualitative empirical research, whose methodology is based on the Grounded Theory. Although the objective of the research is broader, for reasons of space, the part corresponding to the analysis of the organizational and curricular context from the teachers' perspective is presented here. The interviewers' data collection was through observation, field diary, and audio recording of the focus groups, with the participation of 68 teachers from 17 Secondary Schools in the province of Valencia, reaching theoretical saturation in the eighth school. The fieldwork was carried out between October 2019 and February 2020. The Atlas.ti software (v.8) was used for data processing, which allowed open, axial, co-occurrence and selective coding. The conclusions of the study are: (1) the difference in infrastructure, size and ratio have an impact on educational quality, (2) institutional coordination is necessary to adapt the student transition between the different educational levels, (3) school organization together with a fragmented curriculum in core, specific and free configuration subjects, hinder the acquisition of competencies, and (4) the choice of STEM subjects depends on the gender of the students and their family environment.