Digital fluency and the entitlement curriculum : who are the computational thinkers?

Abstract

The concept of a digital curriculum has been discussed widely both nationally and internationally in recent years. In New Zealand, the 2017 Digital Curriculum (Hangarau Matihiko) outlined a vision for two technology areas that provide both an entitlement curriculum (to which every student should be entitled) and a specialist curriculum (for elective study) in computational thinking and digital outcomes.

In this paper, we explore the broad set of definitions of digital fluency and ask to what extent this concept is embedded in the digital curriculum. We also raise some questions around the nature of an entitlement curriculum in this area, and to what extent the concept of digital fluency is or is not embodied in that part of the published curriculum that is intended for all students, in contrast to the specialist curriculum that only some senior students will choose to follow. We suggest some important characteristics that should be present in an entitlement curriculum for digital fluency, and discuss some aspects of these that we are currently integrating into our own courses that address the new curriculum, providing some suggestions for how others might implement the digital curriculum in their own contexts