Independent assessment of the several digital skills of secondary school students: Approaches and results

Abstract

The article presents and comprehends the results of an independent assessment of several digital skills of students of general education organizations. The problem of assessing digital skills is relevant the PISA international research on the quality of education, which includes the study of this competence various aspects. Digital literacy is a strategic education system direction of the Russian Federation, the Perm Region, and the city of Perm.The study provides an assessment of the digital skills of eighth graders in terms of the computational thinking and safe behaviorin a digital environment (sample of schoolchildren in the city of Perm).The research is based on a competence-based approach, consideration of digital skills in the context of assessing functional literacy, the use of big data for making management decisions in education, approaches to implementing an independent assessment in education.The most scarce trainees’ skills in the aspects of digital security and computational thinking are highlighted: critical attitude to information on the Internet; selection of Internet sources for a practical task; assessment of the capabilities of digital tools for solving practical problems. The study shows the need to improve the training of students in the use of digital technologies for solving practical problems. The authors formulate recommendations for the training of teachers of general education organizations teaching various subjects, as well as students studying in pedagogical areas of training. The revealed deficient skills of students show the need to improve the methods of teaching informatics.The authors emphasize the need to comprehend the problem of independent assessment of digital skills as an interdisciplinary problem affecting general pedagogy, teaching methods of informatics, pedagogy of vocational education, meta-pedagogy and metamethodology, big data analysis for making management decisions in education.