Digital Literacy as Part of a New Curriculum for the Netherlands

Introduction

Even though “information science” and “informatics” was part of the national curriculum in the Netherlands in the 1980s/90s, this was a) particularly the case in secondary education and b) primarily focused on understanding and be able to work with computers and programming. These subjects eventually proved very difficult to implement and they disappeared in 2000 from the curriculum (Voogt & ten Brummelhuis, 2014). The discussion about Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education gradually changed from learning about ICT to using ICT for learning and more and more attention was paid to the integration of ICT in education as a “tool” for teachers. Yet, about 10 years later, the discussion on learning about ICT started again, among others because of a report of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2012). In this report to the Academy stated that the increasing digitization of information and communication in society requires new skills that should get more attention, but that these skills (Digital Literacy) are not getting sufficient attention in education. Other discussion topics such as 21^st century skills, equity, and the perceived overload of the current curriculum led to a broad national discussion about the future of education in the Netherlands. In this chapter we will describe this discussion and the way Digital Literacy will become part of a new designed curriculum.