Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse the content of the field Computer science in the Czech curriculum in the context of the development of digital competence. The change of curriculum documents in education is currently being solved in the Czech Republic. The changes of the national curriculum appeared in 2021 and brought a new field Computer science instead of the former field Information and communication technology. These changes are valid for primary and lower secondary education. In the near future, probably in 2022, the changes will be introduced in higher secondary education as well. The new curriculum moves away from focusing on device and application control skills and, conversely, focuses more on the development of computational thinking and understanding principles of digital technologies. Besides, this new concept means for school practice less focus on the development of digital competence mainly (or only) in computer and ICT oriented subjects.

In addition to this essential curriculum change, the new key competence Digital Competence is also being implemented in the national curriculum, thus the importance of digital literacy and its development is being increased across all educational fields and subjects. According to these changes at the curriculum level, schools need to solve many challenges and problems which arise in practice, including how to find the effective way and concept how to cover the development of digital competence in related or all subjects.

This study focuses on the analysis of curricular documents from the perspective of the possibilities of development of digital competence in the field Computer science and tries to point out the main and marginal intersections between Computer science and digital competence, its sub-areas or themes. It summarizes the topics that relate to digital literacy and computational thinking based on the documents´ analysis at the national level. Among others Programming and Technical troubleshooting can be identified as these topics.

The study also deals with the identification of aspects that are important for the effective implementation of the above-mentioned curriculum changes in school practice. We can mention the thinking of including digital technologies in teaching, a form of didactic transformation of new content or the readiness of teachers and pupils.

Keywords:

Digital competence, digital literacy, computer science, education, curriculum.