Abstrakt
Under the Government's Digital Education Strategy [1], in 2014 the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic (MoEYS) decided to revise cur-riculum for primary, lower and secondary school education. One of the concrete results of the revision which is still ongoing is replacement of the subject of 'ICT' by 'Informatics' with new educational content aimed at computational thinking (CT) development and introduction of digital competence as a key competence developed across all subjects at all levels of education. These changes are to be put into prac-tice in pre-school, primary and secondary schools by 2021/22, and no later than
1.9.2023 [2]. The teachers can use for Informatics Education a set of textbooks and teaching guidelines which were developed in a national project PRIM [3]. In the Czech Republic, it has a long tradition of teacher education for primary school education provided in a form of five-year MA study at nine pedagogical fac-ulties. For faculties of education, the task arises to prepare primary education stu-dent teachers to develop pupils' CT in the 'new' separated subject of ˈInformatics' within four main topics: (1) data, information and modelling, (2) algorithmisation and programming, (3) information systems, and (4) digital technology. Due to the fact that primary school teachers usually teach all subjects included in primary edu-cation curriculum, some informatics concepts can begin to build in other subjects (e.g., mathematics, languages). At Charles University's Faculty of Education, primary education student teachers complete some subjects in which their digital competences are developed and in which they master for using digital technology in primary school education (interac-tive white boards, etc.). In order to be prepared for Informatics Education in primary education, two consecutive obligatory courses, 'Digital Technologies in Primary Education' and 'Didactics of Digital Technology' were included in MA study. The first is organised as a set of interactive lectures for about 100 student teachers, fo-cused on Seymour Papert's constructionist theory, key concepts, textbooks for In-formatics, examples of activities for CT development without using computers. The second one is organised in a computer lab as a set of practical exercises in robotics, programming in Scratch, etc.