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training. Year eight will follow the consecutive year.
However, schools continue to struggle with the prob-
lem of who is teaching what, and how due to a staffing
shortfall and a lack of instructional materials.
This paper describes the theoretical background of
“Digital Education” in Europe with a focus on Aus-
tria. It also addresses the implementation of the new
curriculum and looks at preliminary findings from a
survey that 673 Austrian secondary teachers took be-
tween September and December 2022.
2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 Digital Education in Europe
The Joint Research Center of the European Union de-
fines “Digital Competence” as the following (Ferrari,
2013):
Digital Competence is the set of knowl-
edge, skills, attitudes (thus including abili-
ties, strategies, values and awareness) that are
required when using ICT and digital media
to perform tasks; solve problems; communi-
cate; manage information; collaborate; create
and share content; and build knowledge ef-
fectively, efficiently, appropriately, critically,
creatively, autonomously, flexibly, ethically,
reflectively for work, leisure, participation,
learning, socialising, consuming, and empow-
erment.
Every European citizen must acquire these skills
in order to use digital technology critically and cre-
atively, and the European Digital Competence Frame-
work (DigCompEdu) addresses this need. It offers
a framework for comprehending what it means to be
digitally competent and provides a solid base that can
inform policies in many nations (Redecker and Punie,
2017).
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the European
Commission released a “Digital Education Action
Plan (DEAP)” in September 2020 to influence the
path that European education should take. Two rele-
vant strategies were proposed: Strategy (1) defines the
technical part of the plan and concentrates on digital
infrastructure and the provision of equipment. Addi-
tionally, it nurtures teachers’ required digital abilities.
Area (2) provides digital education, including the un-
derstanding of new technologies. The main objective
of the program is to update educational systems and
adapt them to recent significant digital advancements.
Reports show that there are serious structural biases
across the EU member states. Only 35% of primary
schools show a reliable infrastructure, whereas 52%
and 72% of lower and higher secondary schools are
considered well equipped (Kask and Feller, 2021).
In Austria’s bordering country Switzerland a
project called “Lehrplan 21” has been developed to
implement the topic “Media and Computer Science”
throughout the school career. The project concen-
trates on “Understanding Media & Responsible Us-
age”, “Basic Computer Science Concepts and Prob-
lem Solving”, as well as “Applied Computer Science”
(Grandl and Ebner, 2017).
According to a 2010 research by the Dresden Uni-
versity, twelve of Germany’s 16 states have media lit-
eracy or fundamental computer science ideas included
in their curricula. But otherwise there is no nation-
wide directive for teaching computer science or digi-
tal education (Grandl and Ebner, 2017).
After giving every student in Great Britain a BBC
micro:bit when they turned eleven or twelve in 2014,
the country added “Information and Communication
Technology” as a required subject. Educational and
teaching objectives concentrate on “Computer Sci-
ence”, “Digital Literacy”, and “Information Technol-
ogy” (Grandl and Ebner, 2017).
Moreover, Slovakia installed the subject “Infor-
matika” for all students from grade two to eleven
by focusing on computational thinking (Grandl and
Ebner, 2017).
Poland’s curriculum now includes lessons on “Un-
derstanding and Analysis of Problems” and “Pro-
gramming and Problem Solving by Using Computers
and other Digital Devices” (Grandl and Ebner, 2017).
Of course, the EU may only give suggestions and
has limited capacities as each member is responsible
for its own system. The European Union can still offer
guidelines for member state coordination, though.
2.2 Digital Education in Austria
Three sub-projects were presented in the Austrian
government’s “Masterplan for Digitalization”, which
was published in 2018. The first sub-project, titled
“Teaching and Learning Content”, focuses on updat-
ing current curricula – however, digital content must
be included. Additionally, it establishes the subject
of “Digital Education” and regulates the creation and
acquisition of digital teaching and learning resources
for classrooms. The second sub-project defines the
concept of “Teacher Training and Teacher Educa-
tion”. The third section of the master plan, “Infras-
tructure and Modern School Administration”, helps in
increasing technological infrastructure, installing dig-
ital devices (both technical and administrative), and
optimizing school administration through the use of
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