Engl. transl.: School 4.0 - Digital Education from an Austrian Perspective

At the core of this project was an international comparative analysis of the public discourse on smart toys in Europe (Germany, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, United Kingdom) and Australia. A special focus was on the age group of 0 to 8 year olds; in addition, public discourses with regard to older children and adolescents were also analyzed. The project was divided into two parts. The first part of this project was the analysis of public reporting on smart toys and the Internet of Things in relation to children in Europe. A survey was carried out between November 2016 and January 2017 and the data were evaluated in spring and summer 2017. In the second part of the project, the focus was on the German-speaking area. A second wave of surveys with an identical research design will take place between November 2017 and January 2018 in order to compare the data accordingly and to be able to determine changes and shifts in the public discourse. The data analysis took place in spring and summer 2018 and was compared with results from the international partner countries. In spring 2019, another survey was carried out with the same research design, with the aim of a longitudinal study that enables a comparison over three years. After the project has been completed, the annual surveys will be continued in Germany and Austria. This publication deals with implications for modern curricula in Austria.

"Both media education and informatics education are firmly anchored in Austrian education policy through separate departments within the Ministry of Education. Since the early 1990s, the Basic Decree on Media Education has formed the basis for media education in schools, and with increasing digitisation, great importance is also attached to informatics education. The topic of digital education has been explicitly pursued since the beginning of 2017, when the Ministry announced the "School 4.0" strategy. In the following, the various approaches to media education in schools are therefore examined in order to provide an insight into the Austrian perspective on digital education. Furthermore, the pilot project Learning to Think - Solving Problems, which the Ministry of Education initiated in the course of its digitalisation strategy, is presented, as it particularly illustrates the current focus in Austria. Finally, the question will be asked to what extent the concepts within Austrian education policy, which at first glance appear to be very divergent, can be transformed into a unified strategy." (Trültzsch-Wijnen, 2018, 34; translated by the coder)