Future Scenarios for High School Digital Technology in New Zealand.

Digital Technologies (DT) achievement standards including computer science and programming were introduced as elective subjects in New Zealand’s high schools more than 10 years ago. However, many challenges still exist with regards to student participation and the teaching of these subjects. This motivated us to seek local and international experts’ opinions regarding the future of high school DT education in New Zealand, and possible solutions to improve the present situation. In this paper we present results from a three round Delphi study with a panel of 32 experts, exploring their perspectives on likely and desirable future scenarios. After three rounds of survey we can provide the following major findings: First, most experts indicated that either Little Change or Slow Improvements are more likely to occur than Significant Improvements within the next ten years. Second, more professional development for teachers and free availability of approved resources were regarded as the most important solutions to be implemented, amongst many others, to achieve a desirable future scenario.