Essay on the Importance of ICT in Education Curriculum: Achieving Economic & Social Growth

The readings emphasis on the importance of including Information and Communication technology in today's education curriculum. The importance of ICT in today's education curriculum is that it helps to foster economic and social growth of individual countries through the knowledge ladder (Kozma, 2011). The knowledge ladder refers to the different policies that are necessary to achieve certain goals. For instance, economic growth requires the accumulation of capital and an increase in productivity. On the other hand, social growth can be achieved by promoting basic education, gender equality, and improving health quality (Salas-Pilco, & Law, 2018). All these development changes require that the society is exposed to the knowledge ladder which begins by basic education, knowledge acquisition, knowledge deepening, and knowledge creation respectively.

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Another importance of including ICT context in the curriculum is that it helps to foster economic development. ICT contexts play an important role in helping countries implement their development policies ("ICT Competency", 2008). Additionally, ICT plays an important role in research thus helping countries to achieve their goals in economic and social development. As such, the developing countries have started investing in ICT education by implementing policies that allow children to access computers (Kozma & Vota, 2014). However, there have been challenges hindering the success of the intensive use of ICT in developing countries. The slow rate of implementation of ICT curriculum has left some countries behind in terms of economic and social development.

To ensure that countries benefit from the ICT curriculum, countries need to enact policies that promote education priorities. For instance, the Qingdao Declaration of China emphasizes the use of the ICT context in the education curriculum. The Qingdao declaration (2015) puts education priorities first by enacting and investing in policies that allow the people of China to have access to and knowledge of information technology. For example, the declaration recognizes ICT, not as a skill but the foundation for the success of its people and economic development.

References

ICT Competency Standards for Teachers: Policy Framework. (2008). UNESCO. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/ict-competency

Kozma, R. B. (2011). A framework for ICT policies to transform education. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)(Ed.), Transforming education: The power of ICT policies, 19-36.

Kozma, R. B., & Vota, W. S. (2014). ICT in developing countries: Policies, implementation, and impact. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 885-894). Springer, New York, NY.

Qingdao Declaration of International Conference on ICT and Post-2015 Education. (2015). research.unir.net. Retrieved from http://research.unir.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-Quingdao-Declaration.pdf

Salas-Pilco, S. Z., & Law, N. W. (2018). ICT Curriculum Planning and Development: Policy and Implementation Lessons from the Small Developing States. In ICT-Supported Innovations in Small Countries and Developing Regions (pp. 77-98). Springer, Cham.