Authors:
Corinna Hörmann
;
Eva Schmidthaler
and
Barbara Sabitzer
Affiliation:
STEM Didactics, Johannes Kepler University, Altenbergerstraße 68, Linz, Austria
Keyword(s):
Digital Education, 21st Century Skills, Computational Thinking, STEM.
Abstract:
In response to the requirement that every European citizen acquires the skills necessary for enhancing and utilizing digital technology in a critical, inventive, and creative way, the European Digital Competence Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) was developed. In Austria, grade 9 students began taking “Computer Science” in 1985. For a very long time, there was only this single year of IT education that was compulsory during the educational career. 21st century skills were finally formally integrated into higher grades when Austria introduced the mandatory curriculum “Digital Education” (Digitale Grundbildung) in September 2018 for all students in lower secondary education. The administration of the school could decide whether to provide “Digital Education” as a standalone course or whether to integrate it into other subjects. Finally, the new curriculum was added to the regular timetable as a compulsory subject in the 2022/2023 academic year. But because
of a staffing shortage and a lack of teaching material, schools continue to struggle with the issue of who is teaching what and how. This paper discusses the introduction of the new curriculum and examines early results of a poll that 673 teachers participated in between September and December 2022.
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