Digital Technologies in the Australian School Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has released a Consultation Report on the Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies and revised report The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies. This includes Digital Technologies. These follow a draft document published in March 2012.

In Digital Technologies students use digital systems, digital information and computational thinking to create solutions that enable the articulation of human knowledge. They develop understanding of the relationship and interconnectedness between the components of digital systems in authentic situations. They consider social, cultural, legal, environmental and ethical issues. They use computational thinking methods and strategies to understand and solve information problems. They develop conceptual, collaborative and technical skills to systematically create information processing solutions (such as means of communication, databases, digital media, robotics, transactions and websites) for specified audiences, end users, clients or consumers. They learn to operate and manage digital systems to locate, manage, organise, analyse, represent and present information; create digital products; troubleshoot, control and monitor processes and devices; communicate with others; and support computational and design thinking and production. ...

From: The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, August 2012

Key strengths

There was support for the following directions:

• Technologies as a learning area in the Australian curriculum the emphasis on the entitlement of all students to access Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies from Foundation to Year 8
• two discrete technologies strands/subjects: Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies
• the overarching idea: engaging in creating preferred futures
• the scope and sequence (with minor amendments to progression and clarification of language, in particular for Digital Technologies)
• the broad descriptions of the relationship of the General capabilities and Cross-curriculum priorities to the Technologies curriculum.

Matters for improvement

The following issues were consistently raised in the consultation feedback:

• concerns around nomenclature and the clarity between subjects, strands and sub-strands
• a need to strengthen references to agriculture as food and fibre production
• a need to strengthen references to food, nutrition and health
• inclusion of a paragraph to describe how ICT capability is addressed in Design and Technologies (although 86 per cent of respondents supported the statement about the ICT general capability and 72 per cent understood the difference between the capability and the Digital Technologies curriculum)
• further clarity needed around how technologies contexts are described and which would be prescribed
• clearer explanation about which electives are to be developed by ACARA and which can continue to be offered by states and territories
• the paper needs to be more accessible to its audience; a number of respondents described it as clear and coherent, however, others found it difficult to navigate, repetitive and including technical language not appropriate for primary years’ practitioners (especially in Digital Technologies)
• implementation issues:
  • the proposed indicative hours for writing Technologies curriculum were interpreted as time allocations for teaching and were generally deemed as insufficient for in-depth and sustained learning
  • factors such as teacher training, professional learning, resources and equipment will require consideration if the intention of the Technologies curriculum is to be realised. This particularly applies to Digital Technologies in the primary years.

From: Consultation Report on the Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, August 2012