Abstract
Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy education has become an important issue, and the necessity of computational literacy (CL) has been increasing in our growing information society. CL is becoming an important element for future talents, and many countries, including the USA, are developing programs for CL education. Accordingly, Korea’s Ministry of Education has modified the ICT education program created in 2000. The revised curriculum has emphasized computational thinking and informational ethics since 2007. However, in revising the ICT curriculum, we need to develop a new ICT test tool because the previous tool did not include CL. Thus, we developed a new ICT literacy test tool consisting of fundamental concepts, contemporary skills, and CL. We then carried out a test on 40,072 elementary students nationally. To determine the CL level of students, we used the standard level obtained from ten experts using the Angoff method (1971) and analyzed the difference between the standard level and students’ level in the test. The results showed that students’ CL scores were remarkably lower than their scores on fundamental concepts and contemporary skills. We consequently found that the revised ICT curriculum did not apply to the current ICT education domain, implying that we need to develop a strategy to expand CL to different educational fields, which would help researchers and administrators to measure CL in ICT education.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Angoff, W. H. (1971). Scales, norms and equivalent scores. In R. L. Thorndike (Ed.), Educational measurement (2nd ed., pp. 508–600). Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education.
Armstrong, S., & Warlick, D. (2004). The new literacy: the 3Rs evolve into the 4Es. Technology & Learning, 25(2), 20.
Begel, A., Garcia, D. D., & Wolfman, S. A. (2004). Kinesthetic learning in the classroom. In Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE TSCSE (pp. 183–184). New York, USA: ACM.
Bell, T., Fellows, M., & Witten, I. (2008). Computer science unplugged: off-line activities and games for all ages. http://csunplugged.com. Accessed 15 May 2011.
Bergin, J., Kelemen, C., McNally, M., Naps, T., Goldweber, M., Power, C., & Hartley, S. (2001). Non-programming resources for an introduction to CS: a collection of resources for the first courses in computer science. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 33, 89–100.
Choi, S., Bell, T., Jun, S., & Lee, W. (2008). Designing offline computer science activities for the Korean elementary school curriculum, Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on innovation and technology in computer science education, June 30–July 02, Spain, Madrid. New York: ACM.
diSessa, A. (2000). Changing minds: computers, learning, and literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ETS (2001). Digital transformation: a framework for ICT literacy. A report of the international ICT Literacy Panel. www.ets.org/ictliteracy. Accessed 15 May 2011.
Fischer, G. (2005). Computational literacy and fluency: being independent of high-tech scribes. In J. Engel, R. Vogel, & S. Wessolowski (Eds.), Strukturieren–Modellieren–Kommunizieren. Leitbild mathematischer und informatischer aktivitäten (pp. 217–230). Hildesheim: Franz Becker.
Futschek, G. (2006). Algorithmic thinking: the key for understanding computer science. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4226, 159–168.
Guzdial, M. (2008). Education—paving the way for computational thinking. Communication of the ACM, 51(8), 25–27.
Hohlfeld, T. N., Ritzhaupt, A. D., Barron, A. E., & Kemker, K. (2008). Examining the digital divide in K–12 public schools: four‐year trends for supporting ICT literacy in Florida. Computers & Education, 51(4), 1648–1663.
Honey, M., Meade, T., Brunner, C., Ching, D., Clements, P., & Mandinach, E. (2007). Computational literacy final report: major research and education activities, a final report of center for children and technology. October 1
KERIS (2001). Development of ICT skill standard for students (ISSS) and curriculum of K–12 (CR 2001–3). Korea Education and Research Information Service. A special report of the ICT literacy research.
KERIS (2002). A study on standardization of ICT skill standard for students (ISSS) and detailing the curriculum (CR 2002–5). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
KERIS (2005). A model curriculum for integrating computer science and ICT curriculum KERIS (KR 2005–29). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
KERIS (2007). Development of a test tool for ICT literacy; elementary school (KR 2007–18). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
KERIS (2008). Development of an ICT literacy test for junior and senior high school students (KR 2008–4). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
KERIS (2009). Assessing student’s ICT literacy at a national level (KR 2009–15). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
KERIS (2010). Assessing student’s ICT literacy at a national level (KR 2010–9). A special report of Korea Education and Research Information Service.
Kim, H., & Lee, W. (2008). CS-unplugged for computational literacy. 2008 CS-unplugged Asian Workshop. China.
Kim, S., Han, S., & Kim, H. (2009). How can we teach computational literacy to all levels of students? In 2009 fifth international joint conference on INC, IMS and IDC, Seoul, Korea, August 25–August 27 (pp. 1395–1400).
Kong, S. C. (2008). A curriculum framework on implementing information technology in school education to foster information literacy. Computers & Education, 51(1), 129–141.
McDowell, C., Werner, L., Bullock, H., & Fernald, J. (2002). The effects of pair-programming on performance in an introductory programming course. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 34(1), 38–42.
MOE & KERIS (2006). Adapting education to the information age. A special report of Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in KOREA and Korea Education in KOREA and Research Information Service.
MOE (2000). Guidelines for information and communications technology training in elementary and secondary schools. A special of Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in KOREA.
MOE (2005). Guidelines for information and communications technology training in elementary and secondary schools (Revised edition). A special report of Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in KOREA.
OECD. (2006). Are students ready for a technology-rich world?: What PISA studies tell us (Programme for international student assessment (PISA)). New York: Organization for Economic Press.
Pedro, F. (2008). New millennium learners: a project in progress. Paris: OECD. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/1/38358359.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2011.
Robertson, J. (2010). How to assess computational thinking? http://judyrobertson.typepad.com/adventure_author/2010/03/how-to-assess-computational-thinking.html. Accessed 03 Mar 2010.
Snyder, L. (2003). Fluency with information technology: skills, concepts, and capabilities. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Wen, J. R., & Shih, W. L. (2008). Exploring the information literacy competence standards for elementary and high school teachers. Computers & Education, 50(3), 787–806.
Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35.
Yoo, S., Yeum, Y., Kim, Y., Cha, S., Kim, J., Jang, H., et al. (2006). Development of an integrated informatics curriculum for K–12 in Korea. In Informatics education—the bridge between using and understanding computers (pp. 199–208). Berlin: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jun, S., Han, S., Kim, H. et al. Assessing the computational literacy of elementary students on a national level in Korea. Educ Asse Eval Acc 26, 319–332 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-013-9185-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-013-9185-7