In 2014, the Australian Government introduced the Digital Technologies Curriculum (DTC). Designed to meet the demands of an increasingly digital world and workforce, the DTC was established to teach these essential digital skills and capabilities from early education.
However, crucial to the success of the DTC is the ability of teachers to implement it and, according to a new research report from The Australian National University (ANU) Tech Policy Design Centre and the Australian Computer Society (ACS), more than two-thirds of teachers are currently struggling to do so.
Teacher spoke to the lead author of the Tech skills for the next generation report, Dr Cath Latham, about some of the challenges and how schools can best support teachers.
Hi Cath, can you briefly explain what this report is about?
The report identifies how best to ensure Australia can equip the next generation with digital skills they will need for the future. This future is digital – participation in all aspects of life is increasingly dependent on the ability to successfully navigate new technologies, digital applications, services and tools.
For Australia, the current approach to boost digital skills is through the introduction of the Digital Technologies Curriculum (DTC) into Australian primary and secondary schools [in 2014]. It was developed through wide consultation by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). The Curriculum sets national objectives for digital technologies learning, aiming to build thinking skills – computational, systems and design thinking – as well as digital literacy as fundamental knowledge and skills with the same level of importance as literacy, through English, or numeracy, through Maths.
Reports of declining interest in technical subjects across STEM fields, particularly in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) fields, prompted the ACS to gather evidence on how teachers were going with delivering the curriculum in the classroom through a survey. This report is the analysis of the 2023 survey results and development of policy interventions by the AU Tech Policy Design Centre, with input from a working group of experts from across the education sector.
What are the key takeaways from those survey responses?
Teachers are passionate about digital technologies and want to engage students in the classroom, but they need more support for it than they do for other learning areas and subjects.
The impact [of teachers struggling to effectively teach the DTC] is that student engagement in digital technologies is falling, which means fewer students are going onto further education or careers in technology areas. It also risks creating a generational skills gap, where the next generation misses the opportunity to develop the necessary tech and thinking skills they’ll need for any career, and full participation in society.
Teachers say they want more support, but what are the issues they need help with?
The main challenges reported by teachers through the survey (and confirmed by our expert working group) are specific to digital technologies education. These lead to lower teacher confidence than other subjects and lead to lower engagement by students.
The challenges for teachers with digital technologies fall into 4 areas:
- Technology is a fast-moving subject area, and teachers have more difficulty keeping lessons relevant than in other subjects that are more established in the curriculum.
- Curriculum content is often less familiar and can be highly technical – not all teachers are ICT specialists, and many teach out of field or are teaching Digital Technologies in other learning areas. The impact is that teachers – who are already very time poor in the current environment – need more time to prep lessons and programs than for other subjects.
- It is a newer subject, where resources are hard to find; there is limited practical guidance on which resources are working well in the classroom for Digital Technologies compared to other subjects/learning areas.
- Lower awareness of the value of digital technologies among parents and the school community. The impact is that there is a lower likelihood of positive reinforcement about what kids are learning when they are outside school/at home.
So, what can schools be doing to better support teachers with these challenges?
In the report we make a few recommendations specifically targeted to school leaders with ways to better support their teachers with Digital Technologies education:
Ensuring there are go-to resources for teachers
- Improve schools’ internal information management processes regarding digital teaching resources to ensure they reach teachers who need them in the classroom (details on p16-17 of the report). Providers of go-to resources send them to schools, but the point of contact or information flow at the school means it doesn’t always reach the teachers who need them.
Elevating awareness of the DTC in the community
- Empower parents with the tools and capabilities to understand and communicate [with their children at home] the value of Digital Technologies, including the types of technology careers that can be pursued and how the skills can be applied to solve problems in a range of industries (p23).
- [Related to the prior point], ensure that tools and capabilities that empower parents are inclusive and increase visibility of underrepresented groups in STEM fields, such as women and girls and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (p23).
- Recognise and reward excellence in Digital Technologies education to increase visibility to parents and the education community and promote best practice-teaching in Australian schools (p24). School leaders can nominate their teachers for these awards to help raise awareness for their teachers and for their school.
Supporting ongoing professional development and training
- Schools can also support teachers to attend professional development training, wherever possible. Recommendation 7 … is targeted at state and territory governments, but there are also opportunities for school leaders to recognise the need [for training] and facilitate their teachers to attend. That’s not just for the ‘Digital Technologies specialist’ teacher, it’s for any teacher that is keen to integrate the curriculum across their learning area.
Aside from getting that additional support from schools and school leaders, what can teachers be doing now to more effectively teach Digital Technologies?
Our research showed that there are a few opportunities for teachers to get immediate support.
Many survey respondents reported that there were great resources on the Digital Technologies Hub, which is free and online. [There are] resources like lesson plans, scope and sequence and other materials matched to the DTC and it even includes resources for current tech like AI (the Hub is supported by the Australian Government and designed for exactly the challenges teachers are facing). Other resources reported by teachers as working well in both primary and secondary schools for the DTC are provided in the Annex of our report (p66-72).
[Teachers can be] getting in touch with subject associations and other career employment groups for teachers, as they provide a strong community of practice for teachers to learn firsthand what is working well for others and help build confidence in delivering the DTC. Joining a subject association or similar group for teachers in [their] state or territory is also a great way to share knowledge and learn from others about how the Australian Curriculum DTC aligns with the state curriculum, which isn’t always clear.
A key part of better implementation is better engagement by students – this can be boosted by helping smash myths that parents and others outside school may have about the subject and [by showing its value in] teaching foundational skills like English or Maths. Teachers can seize the opportunity to show parents that Digital Technologies isn’t just all about ‘gadgets and devices’ and ‘more screen time’, or just for ‘nerds’ who want to go into computer careers – quite the opposite! It’s teaching kids essential analytical and thinking skills that they can apply in any job, and in everyday life beyond their schooling. It’s also smashing myths that all kids are ‘digital natives’ – not everyone automatically knows where their data goes (privacy) or how to use digital tools, online platforms and other everyday technology safely and responsibly.
What are the next steps now that this report is out there?
According to Mark Cohen (Director, Careers) and Catherine Newington (ICT Educators' Specialist) from the ACS, the hope is that this report will be used as a tool to help advocate for change.
‘Catherine will be leading the work with our ICT Educators Committee to synthesise the feedback we've received and the discussions from the roundtables, determine next steps for activating the recommendations, [and] plan our next phase of research in preparation for the next instalment of the report (planned for 2026),’ says Cohen.
‘This paper is a great tool and we're happy to put it into the hands of members of the education ecosystem,’ he adds.
In the meantime, Newington recommends checking out the ACS’s ICT Educators Program – which supports teachers with the DTV – for helpful curriculum resources, webinars and lesson plans.
As a school leader, do staff at your school have the support needed to effectively teach Digital Technologies? How do you ensure teachers have the knowledge to teach the content, as well as access to supporting resources?
One challenge highlighted in the report is out-of-field teaching – meaning teachers with little digital knowledge are having to teach Digital Technologies (whether as a subject or part of other classes). Does your school utilise collaborative PD, where teachers can discuss, share notes and lesson plans, and learn from each other?
Dr Cath Latham says Digital Technologies teaches kids ‘essential analytical and thinking skills that they can apply in any job, and in everyday life.’ Do parents and students at your school understand this subject is important for everyone, not just those wanting ‘to go into computer careers.’
