In November 2014, the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands officially launched an online country-wide consultation about the future of Dutch education. Based on the outcomes and the ongoing debate, the Netherlands started the development of a new curriculum framework for primary and secondary education in 2018. One of the new themes in this curriculum is Digital Literacy, which is defined as a combination of ICT skills, media literacy, information literacy and computational thinking. Together with the other subjects (Dutch, Arithmetic/mathematics, English/modern foreign languages, Citizenship, Exercise & Sport, Art & Culture, Human & Nature, Human & Society) Digital Literacy will be part of the design of the new curriculum. A teacher design team for Digital Literacy developed a vision and elaborated this in eight so-called big ideas. Based on the big ideas learning trajectories were designed. These learning trajectories describe what students should learn in primary and secondary education.

1. ΩSLO ● nationaal expertisecentrum leerplanontwikkeling
A future-proof curriculum with digital
Literacy
Allard Strijker & Petra Fisser, SLO - National Institute For
Curriculum Development Netherlands 2019-06-28, Edmedia

2. Hey Siri, how old is
my father?
• How to formulate a question?
• How to create an instruction?
• What is the meaning of words?
• How to use computers?
• How to get and control data?
• Where does data reside?
• What data is presented?
• How is data represented?
• Who decides what i see?
• Who is owner of the data?
• Who may use the data?
• Did I get what I wanted?
• Do computers have humor?
• Can computers Think?

3. About SLO
• National Institute for Curriculum Development in the
Netherlands
• Assigned by Ministry of education
• Task: design and validation of national curricular
frameworks
(core objectives,
attainment levels,
examination programs)

4. The Dutch curriculum
• In 1993 attainment targets (‘goals to strive for’) for primary
and junior secondary education were formulated (upper
secondary education uses the examination program as goal)
• At this moment it is a mixture of common attainment targets
(‘goals to strive for’) covering the whole range of subject
domains and common standards (‘goals to attain’) for literacy
and numeracy
• But: there is not one curriculum framework that provides a
common, comprehensive and cohesive answer to the
question of what is of most worth learning and teaching
(freedom of education!)

5. Digital Literacy
• Digital literacy is the whole of ICT
(basic) skills, media literacy,
information skills, and computational
thinking
• ICT (basic) skills
– able to deal with ICT
• Media literacy
– conscious, active and critical use of
media
• Information literacy
– search, select, process and use relevant
information
• Computational thinking
– (re) formulating problems so that they
can be solved with the computer
In
Information
literacy
Computational
thinking
Media
literacy
ICT basic
skills
Digital
literacy

6. A new curriculum, why?
• Clear descriptions what knowledge and skills are
required for the future
• Reduce the percieved overload in the curriculum
• Increase coherence
• Describe learning trajectories
• Make clear what parts are mandatory and optional

7. Subjects in the new curriculum
• Digital Literacy (including
Computational Thinking)
• English / modern foreign languages
• Dutch
• Arithmetic / mathematics
• Citizenship
• Exercise & Sport
• Art & Culture
• Human & Nature
• Human & Society

8. Teacher Design Team and Schools
• 125 Teachers
• 18 School leaders
• 84 Development schools
• Digital literacy
• Teacher Design Team
• 15 Teachers and school leader from
Primary and secondary education
• 5 primary schools
• 5 secondary schools
• 1 teacher training

9. Designing a new curriculum
Vision Big Ideas Building blocks
The vision describes
why the subject is
important for learners
in primary and
secondary education
for learning, working
and living in a future
society
The big ideas
describe de core of
the topics that ae
relevant for the
subject
Building blocks
describe in detail the
learning trajectories
for primary and
secondary education
in knowledge and
skills

10. Feedback
• After each design phase
• Teachers, Learners, Parents from selected Schools
• Selected experts, research
• Online consultation http://www.curriculum.nu

11. Vision
• The vision describes why the
subject is important for
learners in primary and
secondary education for
learning, working and living in
a future society

12. Big ideas
• Data and information
• Safety & privacy
• Using & controling
• Communication and
collaboration
• Digital Citizenship
• Digital Economy
• Using & designing
• Sustainability

13. Digital literacy components
• ICT (basic) skills
• Media literacy
• Information literacy
• Computational thinking

14. Perspectives on digital literacy
• Dealing with digital technologies
• Knowing about digital technologies
• Thinking about digital technologies
• Creating with digital technologies

15. General skills
• Thinking and acting
– Creative thinking
– Problem solving
– Critical thinking
• Dealing with others
– Communication
– Collaboration
– Social and cultural skills
• Knowing yourself
– Self regulation
– Orientation on yourself and career
– Entrepeneurship

16. Goals of education
• Personal life
• Society
• Study and profession

17. Data and
information
Safety and
privacy
Using and
controling
Communica-
tion and
collaboration
Digital
Citizenship
Digital
Economy
Using and
designing
Sustainability
and
innovation
From data to
information
Safety Interacting
with digital
technology
Networks The Digital
Citizen
Participation in
a platform
economy
Interacting
with digital
technology
Sustainability
Digital Data Privacy Controlling
digital
technology
Communica-
tion
Digital identity Digital
Marketing
Applying &
Designing
Collaboration

18. What is a Learning Trajectory?
• A learning trajectory is a
reasoned structured set of intermediate objectives and content
leading to a certain core objective

19. Stages
Stage 1
4-7 yr
Stage 2
8-12 yr
Stage 3
13-15 yr
Stage 4
16+ yr
Big idea
Learning trajectory Learning trajectory
Vision

20. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 1
• Children explore the (digital) world around them and learn how they can use
their curiosity in the search for information that can help them further in
understanding the world.

21. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 1
• The students learn:
– to make explicit what they want to know;
– to think of useful questions to extend their knowledge;
– to deal with (digital) resources and several types of media messages and
their purposes such as advertising, information, and amusement in a safe
environment;
– to use and search within (digital) resources and media to find answers for
their questions;
– to represent the information they found;
– to evaluate the process of searching and findings and explicit their
learnings.

22. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 2
• Building on Stage 1 the students learn to deal with more general information.
They learn that the information gathering is a process with several steps. The
complexity increases and the digital component is more important. Media is
used as a digital resource. Students will focus on target groups and the
possibilities for presentation offered by digital technologies.

23. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 2
• Students learn:
– to identify their need for information and to formulate relevant questions;
– to identify the (digital) information resources that are relevant to use for answering questions;
– to formulate, select, combine relevant terms for searching information;
– to collect and evaluate information from several digital tools and resources and decide if the found
information is useful and reliable;
– to recognize facts and meanings from media messages, and how messages can be affected by
using specific words, visualization or audio messages;
– to select information and systematically save the information in a digital environment;
– that information is owned by someone and may not be used freely by everyone;
– to present information with digital technologies, taking into account the public for which the
presentation is intended and making use of the possibilities of digital technology;
– to evaluate the process of information acquisition, processing and presentation and to review the
end-product based on a number of criteria and reflect on the entire process;
– to see the relationship between concepts from digital information processing and computational
thinking

24. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 3
• Stage 3 builds upon stage 2 and students learn more about the possibilities
of digital technology and about the creative use of these technologies in the
process of information acquisition, processing and representing. They also
learn to deal with the limitations of technologies. The topics that they learn
will become more abstract and are more and more related to study,
profession or social developments.

25. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 3
• Students learn:
– to explore and articulate the information needs of others;
– to choose a different search strategy, should the chosen strategy give no or insufficient results;
– how digital search technology works and continues to innovate by exploiting the characteristics of search technology, and they
learn how to cope with the possibilities and limitations of digital search technology;
– how to deal with the difference between reality and the display of this reality in words, images and sounds and its consequences
for the reliability of the information;
– how to interpret, analyze, and summarize information, and to explain their reasoning in relation to the way they answer the
information need;
– how to manage the sources they found (give references, ask permission), and that there are legal conditions for using sources
of others;
– to choose an appropriate form of presentation, using the strength of different types of media;
– to formulate and apply criteria in order to assess the form of presentation on relevance, usability and reliability;
– to apply concepts from computational thinking in the process of acquiring digital information;
– to evaluate their own process of acquiring digital information and that of others and relate this to their future study and
profession;
– to reflect on the role of information acquisition, processing and- representing and its role in society, businesses and professions.

26. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 4
• Stage 4 is the part of education in which students do their exams in upper
secondary education. The complexity of renewing the national exam
documents and procedures without explicitly knowing how Digital Literacy will
be part of the new curriculum (that still has to be implemented!) was a
problem that could not be solved in the current development process. The
TDT decided to give recommendations instead on how to continue working
on the skills and knowledge from Stages 1 to 3.

27. Learning trajectory “From data to information”-
Stage 4
• The TDT recommends that Digital Literacy
– should be part of the official (legal) final terms of secondary education;
– should be integrated in the subjects to contextualize and apply Digital Literacy in the
different domains;
– should be integrated in the subjects to make sure that the students can deepen en widen
their knowledge and skills, so they can become advanced users of digital technology,
with as ultimate goal that all students are digitally literate and are prepared for their
follow-up study and (future) job;
– should be part of computer science, an optional course in Dutch upper secondary
education, to enable students to learn more expert knowledge and skills.
– The TDT also recommends that specialized teachers are appointed to teach Digital
Literacy in upper secondary education.

28. Current status
• Concept version available at http://www.curriculum.nu
• September final version
• November 2019 decision how to proceed
– Integrated in subjects or separate
– How to deal with professional development
– How to find space in current curriculum
– How to finance requirements

29. ΩSLO ● nationaal expertisecentrum leerplanontwikkeling
More information & questions
Allard Strijker - a.strijker@slo.nl
Petra Fisser – p.fisser@slo.nl