Digital directions: Curricular goals relating to digital literacy and digital competences in the Gymnasium (stx) in Denmark.

Abstract

Digital literacy and digital competences are increasingly being formulated as important educational goals. In that regard, the precision, clarity and topicality of curricular guidelines relating to these concepts become vital, and this calls for research that investigates how digital literacy and digital competences are represented in curricular documents. This study makes a contribution to knowledge in this field by investigating the general curriculum for the Gymnasium in Denmark, with a specific focus on differences between the subjects. The article provides a qualitative analysis of 150 paragraphs containing between 4 and 175 words. The findings suggest that aspects relating to digital literacy and digital competences are broadly covered, but also that the different curricula formulate and organize these in very different ways. The article furthermore identifies a clear division of labour between the subjects, where the subjects within the educational field of Natural Science and Technology especially focus on ICT as a neutral learning tool and on ICT-operational competences. The challenges relating to these findings are discussed.