Abstract:

Digital literacy and digital competences are increasingly being formulated as important educational goals (e.g. Abru & Yildiz, 2016; Lankshear & Knobel, 2015). Curriculum may be seen as a fundamental guide for teachers’ work, and curricular documents and guidelines may then be considered an important tool for the realization of digital literacy in education (Aesert, Vanderlinde, Tondeur & van Braak, 2013; Hanell, 2018). In that regard, the precision, clarity and topicality of curricular guidelines relating to these concepts become vital, and this calls for research that investigates how digital literacy and digital competences are represented in curricular documents.

This study contributes to knowledge in this field by investigating the general curriculum for the Gymnasium in Denmark, with a specific focus on differences between the subjects. In 2016, the Danish Government launched a reform of all the Danish Upper Secondary School Programmes, including stx. This reform comprised a distinct focus on digital literacy and digital competences. This abstract is based on a paper (Svendsen & Svendsen, 2021) where we explore how aspects of digital literacy and digital competences are represented in the curricular texts that were developed for the different subjects in stx in Denmark. We provide a qualitative analysis of 150 paragraphs containing between 4 and 175 words.

The findings suggest that aspects relating to digital literacy and digital competences are broadly covered, but also that the different curricula formulate and organize these in very different ways. We identify a clear division of labour between the subjects. Also, we find that there is a strong focus on “using”, “selecting”, “judging trustworthiness” and ethical considerations. However, it is not clear whether the curricular goals encompass a more fundamental understanding of the way in which mediatization affects and changes culture and human behavior on a structural level. The challenges relating to these findings are discussed.

References:
[1] Abreu, B. S. & Yildiz, M., N. (2016) (eds). Global media literacy in a digital age – teaching beyond borders. Peter Lang Publishing.
[2] Aesert, K., Vanderlinde, R., Tondeur, J. & van Braak, J. (2013). The content of educational technology curricula: a cross-curricular state of the art. Education Tech Research Dev, 61,131-151.

Keywords:

Digital literacy, Digital competences, Upper Secondary School, Curriculum.