An introduction from the editors to the CIDREE
yearbook 2021
An introduction from the editors to the CIDREE yearbook 2021
Jos Tolboom works as a mathematics and computing curriculum developer at SLO. Lydwin van Rooyen worked as a digital literacy curriculum developer at SLO until September 2021.
Already ten years before the publication of this CIDREE yearbook, scientists declared the world was embracing a fourth scientific paradigm: that of data-intensive scientific discovery (Tolle, Tansley, & Hey, 2011) (Hey & Trefethen, 2020). Of course, the yields of the former three paradigms are not to be neglected, as science is usually adding knowledge rather than replacing.
Experimental science has brought us the idea that systematic observations and descriptions help in understanding the world. Theoretical science has put effort into the formulation of these observations and descriptions in terms of ‘laws’, as for instance manifested in the astonishing work of sir Isaac Newton (1760). Computational science caught these laws into computerized models, adding simulations to the scientific toolkit (Wilensky, 1999). In the domain of mathematics, as an example, computational experimentation with the population model of Verhulst (1838) and atmospheric models (Lorenz, 1963) led to the formulation of chaos theory, as had been theoretically predicted by Poincaré (1890) In our current era, the abundancy of ubiquitous data, generated by the emerge of the internet of almost everything, facilitates scientists in discovering patterns in the raw data, even without an at forehand explicit law to be tested, thus leading to data-intensive scientific discovery.
Might this classification into scientific paradigms be biased by a contemporary perspective, it is still worthwhile to take a look at how these four paradigms, emerging in time, are reflected in secondary school curriculum. When taking the Dutch strand, the computational paradigm is just reflected in the STEM curriculum, where labs are organised utilizing sensor technology to capture the yields of experiments and simulations can be run, beside the elective theme Computational Science of the elective subject Computing. The data-intensive paradigm is only faintly represented in the domain Statistics of the applied mathematics curriculum. That is, the first and second paradigm are still dominating the Dutch secondary school curriculum.
At the same time we see that not only science but society as a whole is overwhelmed by the opportunities that are offered by digital technology. Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC, 2021)ranked the largest publicly-traded companies by their market capitalization in U.S. dollars. In the top-ten of this list, there were five tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet, Tencent), two tech-retail companies (Amazon, Alibaba Group) and one automotive company (Tesla Incorporation). All of these firms have digital technology in their very core business. It is not exaggerated to state that digital technology dominates modern science and society.
To this CIDREE yearbook fourteen European countries have contributed. This is more than to any yearbook since CIDREE started in 2001 with publishing such a report on a yearly base around an actual European theme. This stresses the urge that is widely felt in order to make sure our curriculum catches up with the turbulent developments as regards digital technology.
When reading the fourteen chapters this CIDREE, one can see that all of the countries on a global level are struggling with the same issues.
Of course, first one has to define what exactly is meant by ‘digital literacy’. Fortunately, there is DigComp 2.1 (Carratero-Gomez, Vuorikari, & Punie, 2017) to refer to. But even then, choices are to be made, and these are being explicated in the chapters of this yearbook.
All of the countries on a global level are struggling with the same issues.
When reading the fourteen chapters this CIDREE, one can see that all of the countries on a global level are struggling with the same issues.
Of course, first one has to define what exactly is meant by ‘digital literacy’. Fortunately, there is DigComp 2.1 (Carratero-Gomez, Vuorikari, & Punie, 2017) to refer to. But even then, choices are to be made, and these are being explicated in the chapters of this yearbook.
All of the countries on a global level are struggling with the same issues.
One fundamental misconception is worth mentioning. In facilitating students’ acquisition of digital literacy digital means can be utilized and this is done on a vast scale. But a sharp distinction is to be made between ‘education WITH ict’ on the one hand and ‘education IN ict’ on the other. This dividing line is nevertheless hard to draw for two reasons. First, in academic and educational practice, the experts on both topics are usually the same professionals. Take a secondary school as an example. The computer science teacher is usually also the expert on digital literacy and is the organization’s ict coordinator as well. So socially, they are commutative. Second, when teaching digital literacy, digital devices and digital resources are relatively intensive used. This way, ‘education WITH ict’ and ‘education IN ict’ are correlated and therefore are more easily exchanged.
We see in all countries the question ‘Is digital literacy to be taught as an independent topic or as an interdisciplinary topic, integrated into the existing subjects?’ posed and to some extent answered. No matter what choices are made with respect to the digital literacy curriculum, roughly, the learning goals can be split up into three categories:
While the first category is a matter of making appointments with the existing subjects, the categories 2 and 3 come with their own challenges. Are, in the first place, the stakeholders of the curriculum of the existing subjects prepared to reformulate their learning goals in a ‘digital literacy way’? And how can we create curricular space for the learning goals belonging to the third category, that can be seen as ‘extra goals’ as regards the existing curriculum?
Above these challenges, in all of the chapters of this yearbook, there is another huge shared issue: the professionalization of the teachers. Most of these have been educated in an era in which digital literacy was not such a big deal, when one was able to use a text processor. As we demonstrated above, this has dramatically changed. How to catch up teachers’ professional competence with this seems for all of the participating countries the most important question when it comes to implementation. As Hege Nilssen, president of the CIDREE board, stated in her foreword of this yearbook that school administrations, teachers and teacher training institute should collaboratively anticipate on the new demands the labour market puts on their future employees (Frey & Osborne, 2017). It seems a logical role for national authorities and the European Union to facilitate the educational system to make this shift towards a digital
literacy incorporated.
Information and communication technology (ICT) is a domain that is full with buzz words and TLA’s (three letter acronyms). In a rapidly changing context, digital engineers hardly have time to coin their terminology before a new hype rushes round.
In an educational setting, this is not much better. It is therefore no surprise that it took some time to establish a common language in which to formulate the learning goals. Most of these goals use the adjective ‘digital’ and describe skills or competences. Almost all of the contributing countries refer to DigComp 2.1, the framework for digital competences as formulated by the European Union. With respect to the reference conceptual model published in DigComp 2.0 (Vuorikari, Carretero Gomez, Punie, & Van Den Brande, 2016), eight proficiency levels and examples of use applied to the learning and employment field were added.
As these countries have independently from each other chosen to underpin their national curriculum as regards digital literacy by this reference conceptual model, the importance of such a model can hardly be overestimated.
In computing, professionals are of course used to working with reference models. The OSI model (Zimmerman, 1980), for instance, being a more general approach for computer networks than the already existing TCP-IP (Cerf & Kahn, 1974), decades ago already demonstrated the value of a reference framework, for the sake of inspiration and standardization. Although in education these two not always go side by side in a happy marriage, ACM and IEEE, being organizations of collaborating professionals have copied this approach to an educational setting. This most recently resulted in Computing curricula 2020 (CC2020) paradigms for global computing education (Clear, et al., 2020). We conclude that collaboratively working with these kinds of frameworks is a huge success in scientific as well as in educational practice. Facilitating organizations, of professional nature like ACM and IEEE, or of political nature, like the European Union, are very powerful and thus important for this kind of collaboration.
CIDREE, being the consortium of institutions for development and research in education in Europe, plays a similar role, albeit on a specific and thus somewhat smaller scale. As the editors, we are grateful to CIDREE’s board for the opportunity to unite curricular creativity, with a relevant and interesting
yearbook 2021 as a result.
Mathematics and computing curriculum developer at SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development
Digital literacy curriculum developer at SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development until September 2021
Mathematics and computing curriculum developer at SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development
Digital literacy curriculum developer at SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development until September 2021
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