Introducing Digital Education as a Mandatory Subject: The Struggle of the Implementation of a New Curriculum in Austria

Corinna Hörmann, Eva Schmidthaler, Barbara Sabitzer

2023

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.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hörmann C., Schmidthaler E. and Sabitzer B. (2023). Introducing Digital Education as a Mandatory Subject: The Struggle of the Implementation of a New Curriculum in Austria. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-641-5, SciTePress, pages 213-220. DOI: 10.5220/0011837000003470

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu23,
author={Corinna Hörmann and Eva Schmidthaler and Barbara Sabitzer},
title={Introducing Digital Education as a Mandatory Subject: The Struggle of the Implementation of a New Curriculum in Austria},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2023},
pages={213-220},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011837000003470},
isbn={978-989-758-641-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - Introducing Digital Education as a Mandatory Subject: The Struggle of the Implementation of a New Curriculum in Austria
SN - 978-989-758-641-5
AU - Hörmann C.
AU - Schmidthaler E.
AU - Sabitzer B.
PY - 2023
SP - 213
EP - 220
DO - 10.5220/0011837000003470
PB - SciTePress