Peter Micheuz

20 years of computers and informatics in austria's secondary academic schools

The way in which Austrian schools have reacted to the needs of a growing digital society has been, all things considered, a success story. This is remarkable as schools in general are not necessarily places where excessive progress takes place. Many teachers are rather conservative and not willing to take part in every new promising development unless they are fully convinced of its benefits. This applies especially to teachers who are now confronted with introducing new technologies. Unlike the more or less established subject Informatics, the overall penetration of information technology in education is still at the beginning. We have to remember that the present situation has not appeared from nowhere, but has to be seen as a result of a comparatively short, but all the more turbulent history with roots already in the seventies. The official start for the subject Informatics in the secondary academic schools in Austria (AHS) can be dated back to 1985 when all these schools have been equipped with computers for the first time. “History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this” is a quotation from Karl Marx and can be applied very well to the development of Informatics in Austrian general educating schools. Even if the visible changes in hardware, software and curricula are remarkable enough it should be pointed out that this short history was a history of people behind these developments, enthusiastic teachers as well as responsible policy makers in that field.

Informatics education at austria's lower secondary schools between autonomy and standards

The present state of informatics education at lower secondary schools in Austria is the result of many single autonomous decisions which have been made locally at schools. The Austrian Ministry of Education has left it to schools to define their profiles and to decide about the amount of imparting informatics to their pupils who are aged between 10 and 14 years. This paper gives a short historical overview and some insight into the present dialectic process between autonomy and the upcoming issue of educational standards. A recently conducted evaluation project in Carinthia/Austria, which can be considered as representative for related current studies in Austria, is presented. Empirical research is important. It perfectly fits the ongoing shift from input orientation to output measuring. Whereas other traditional subjects as (foreign) languages or mathematics are based on solid, historically developed fundaments, the comparatively new field of informatics at schools is still looking for stable frameworks. Considering the newest developments, we can be optimistic to achieve a reasonable solution for improving informatics education at lower secondary schools in Austria. Hopefully the announced educational standards in informatics will help to decrease the digital divide among our pupils.

The role of ICT and informatics in austria's secondary academic schools

Secondary academic schools in Austria provide students with a broad and extended general education. That is their mission. But although these schools consider it as one of their foremost tasks to impart knowledge, they also aim at providing students with other qualifications and skills. This paper describes the special and important role of Informatics and ICT on the lower and upper secondary level. Here an attempt is made to constitute the claim for the subject Informatics as part of general education from a scientific point of view. The recent and still ongoing shift of this subject from the upper level to the lower level secondary education caused some confusion about the allegedely different subjects such as introduction into Informatics, IT or ICT. In the perception of a broad public and even of teachers these terms mean almost the same thing. In this paper I suggest the acceptance of a broader view of the subject Informatics. Moreover an evaluation of all ongoing informatical activities at the secondary academic schools in Austria and subsequently the building of a framework of informatical competence for the whole scope of these particular schools is desirable.

E-Maturity and School Development: When the Tail Wants to Wag the Dog

E-maturity as synonym for successful integration of digital technologies in schools can be seen as the golden thread of this paper. It deals with an Austrian case study about recently conducted ICT-certifications within a ministerial e-Learning project. The process of awarding successful Austrian schools with ICT-certificates is founded on an evaluation framework which has been developed independently from other similar European approaches. Finally, it will be argued that understanding the interdependency of successful ICT integration and school development is a key issue to achieve the status of e-maturity.

Basic Digital Education in Austria - One Step Further.

Based on a nearly thirty years long history to implement digital education in Austrian primary and lower secondary schools, this paper deals with the current development and strategies to encounter this challenge. After a literature review across national borders and some findings on different approaches in two different countries, a compressed historical view and exemplary empirical results from online-surveys describe the current Austrian situation. The paper closes with the outlines of the new curriculum “Basic Digital Education” and some remarks about it.

Curriculum Issues, Competence Models and Informatics Education in Austrian Secondary Schools: Challenges Now and Ahead

At the core of this paper lies an overview of recent developments of Austrian curricula issues in the field of digital education. It puts this important part of educational governance into a broader perspective, comprising considerations about the nature of curricula. The coexistence and interdependency between competence models, national curricula and educational standards are elaborated, together with exemplary in-depth aspects of secondary digital education. After critical reflections about the continuing lack of a coherent and compulsory digital education at lower secondary level, recent amendments of Austrian informatics curricula for upper secondary level are presented and reviewed.