Introduction
To fully engage with the teaching of the digital technologies curriculum, it is helpful to undertake a critical examination of Australian national and state computing curricula within a global context. This chapter includes a commentary on 21st-century skills and digital literacy. There is a case study that looks at the way in which the computational thinking concept has grown in international markets with its own agendas and how this is now shaping the Australian computing curriculum. Confusion over terminology and challenges to teachers and curriculum developers are discussed.
CRITICAL QUESTIONS
What has shaped the Australian digital technologies curriculum?
How do ICT, 21st-century skills and digital literacy challenge existing curricula and coexist with the digital technologies curriculum?
Why is computational thinking used as an organiser for the digital technologies curriculum?
What challenges exist to the implementation of the digital technologies curriculum?
Introduction of digital technologies into the curriculum
The introduction of the digital technologies subject into the curriculum has been a significant step in Australian computer education. When computing was first introduced as a subject area in the 1960s, it focused largely on understanding how the technology worked because that was what was needed at the time to make any effective use of the technology. In the 1970s, some educators (for example, Papert, 1980) saw in this new technology the potential for new ways of thinking and understanding the world through the study of programming.
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