Abstract:

The development of digital technologies, their increasing impact on our lives and their importance for most of us, shows that the ability to use digital technologies effectively and safely is one of the core competencies for today's society.

This idea has been actively pursued for some time by relevant institutions in the context of research or revisions of the educational curriculum. The current update of this document in the Czech Republic is focused on the so-called new concept of informatics, where a clear shift from skills in the use of information and communication technologies to informatics thinking is evident. This approach includes not only the common use of digital technologies as a whole, but especially a significant strengthening of support for algorithmizing, working with data, problem solving, etc. This departure from the basic use of ICT is not only visible in the Czech Republic. As Rahman, Amalia and Aziz (2021) state in their study, even in Indonesia, for example, there is a shift from digital literacy to the notion of digital intelligence. This supports the tendency to expand the knowledge and skills that every individual in the digital community must have. They point to the importance of being able to adapt to technological developments and the dynamics of the digital society.

Within the Czech Republic, this trend is being promoted and computational thinking is being applied to effective problem solving. This area includes, for example, assessing different solutions, selecting the most suitable one for a given situation, separating a large problem into several smaller, easier to solve ones, planning and managing activities, creating procedures that reliably lead to the goal, assessing aspects of the problem, organising even large or disparate data so that it can be further used and, last but not least, the ability to use languages that can be used to communicate with computers, robots or artificial intelligence. (imysleni, 2018) This focus has strengthened the cross-curricular relationships between computer science and mathematics. This trend can be seen in many of the sample problems used in the new concept of computer science.

Several of these tasks were subjected to a research investigation conducted in 2022 with selected students of the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc. A qualitative approach was chosen. Tasks developing mathematical literacy within the framework of informatics thinking, or new informatics, were presented to the students for solution and their view of these tasks from the perspective of future teachers was investigated. The results of this research investigation are described in the paper.

Keywords:

Mathematical literacy, digital literacy, education, teachers.