DATA IN ACTION
A Future-Ready Study for Future-Ready Students Reflections on the IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study
BY JULIAN FRAILLON
ICILS 2023 marks 10 years since ICILS first collected data in 2013. In November 2024, we will release the ICILS 2023 International Report, including data on eighth grade students’ achievement in Computer and Information Literacy (CIL), Computational Thinking (CT), and the contexts in which students develop these competencies. The two previous cycles of ICILS provide an introductory context for us to consider the preparedness of students to participate in their current and rapidly evolving digital worlds.
digital information and digital information sources, and that there was no evidence of increases in students’ CIL in those countries that had participated in both study cycles. Between 2018 and 2023 the world was rocked by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools in many countries quickly transitioned to computer-based remote learning programs in those times. While evidence from international large-scale assessments has consistently shown decreases in student achievement across study cycles spanning this period, some have argued that students’ digital skills may have been aided by their increased experiences of online learning. ICILS 2023 provides the first opportunity to compare the digital literacy of eighth grade students across countries in the period spanning the pandemic. Will students’ CIL and CT achievement show similar declines to those observed in other learning areas, or will they buck these trends? The question of what it means to be future-ready is consistently at the forefront of ICILS. This relates to the nature of students’ CIL and CT and how well students are prepared to participate in their current and future digital worlds, but also to our own predictions of what students’ digital engagement will look like in the future. In each cycle of ICILS, development of the assessment framework and
On balance, data from the previous cycles of ICILS suggest that there remains considerable work to be done to support young people to be safe, effective, and transformative users of digital information, and digital tools and systems. Across the 10-year history of ICILS, digital platforms have increasingly become the primary information sources for many young people. In addition, with our increasing dependence on digital technologies to manage many aspects of our lives, and with ongoing commitments to supporting digital education across the world, one might anticipate that students’ digital literacy would naturally increase. Unfortunately, until now, evidence from ICILS has not supported such expectations. Between 2013 and 2018 we saw from ICILS that many eighth grade students had developed little more than very basic CIL skills, without demonstrating capacities to critically evaluate
"The question of what it means to be future-ready is consistently at the forefront of ICILS."
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