Indicators: Learning Objectives
Digital technologies update
The technology learning area has been revised to strengthen the positioning of digital technologies in The New Zealand Curriculum.
The digital technologies learning objectives and indicators of progression have been replaced with learning progressions in the two technological areas: computational thinking for digital technologies and designing and developing digital outcomes.
The Indicators of Progression (Indicators) provide support for teachers to interpret the Learning Objectives (LOs) for each specialist knowledge and skill technology component. They:
- provide an overview statement that explains the focus of the Learning Objectives and an overview statement about student progression from curriculum levels 6–8;
- restate the Learning Objectives for each level;
- provide guidance to teachers on what they could do to support student learning at curriculum levels 6–8
- provide indicators of what students should know or be able to do at curriculum levels 6–8; and
- indicate the achievement standard(s) that align to the Learning Objective at curriculum levels 6–8.
The Teacher Guidance highlights the importance of the teacher’s role in supporting student learning. It also acknowledges how the nature of teaching needs to change to ensure students are able to take more responsibility for their learning as they progress from curriculum levels 6-8 of the NZC. This has been emphasised by using the following terms to denote this shift in responsibilities from teacher to student.
- Provide is used when the teacher takes full responsibility for introducing and explicitly teaching new knowledge/skill or practices.
- Guide is used when the teacher assumes students will have some level of understanding/competency to draw from but continues to take the majority of the responsibility for developing these understandings further.
- Support is used when the balance shifts towards the student taking more responsibility for their learning, drawing from their past learning to consolidate and extend their understandings. In this case the teacher plays a more supportive role through questioning and challenging students to support them in their learning.
The Teacher Guidance also uses the term ensure to denote when the teacher plays a monitoring role to check that conditions critical for learning are present. For example, in "planning for practice" and "outcome development and evaluation" the teacher must ensure an appropriate brief is available to guide student work.
The Indicators describe specific understandings and capabilities that students should be able demonstrate consistently if they are to be considered to have met the related learning objective. The indicators for each level should be viewed "collectively" as indicating the LO at that level.
NOTE: At this stage of developing indicators for the Learning Objectives the teacher guidance is based on the "best" guidance we have available as to how to support learning at curriculum levels 6–8. It is envisaged that these will be refined later using classroom informed evidence that demonstrates what students "know" and "can do".
Learning Objectives of the specialist Knowledge and Skills strands
Achievement Objectives of the three curriculum strands