CLEMENTINE

Digitalization is an essential foundation for progress toward a modern society. Against the backdrop of rapid developments in the field of cybersecurity on the one hand, and in anticipation of upcoming breakthroughs in other emerging and disruptive technologies on the other, it is important to continue raising public awareness of cybersecurity. A lack of awareness and knowledge about cybersecurity issues poses challenges for companies across all industries. Unfiltered access to data and the free sharing of data and content on the internet offer new, easily and quickly exploitable targets for cybercriminals. In this regard, the integration of cybersecurity into school education is essential, with the need to promote efforts and content in the area of cybersecurity skills training as preparation for everyday working life.

Based on existing measures and initiatives to raise awareness of cybersecurity in Austria (e.g., basic digital literacy), CLEMENTINE addresses the need for research with the following objectives: The main objective is to develop an educational, social, and socio-technical approach to teaching cybersecurity to 14- to 19-year-olds, with a particular focus on acquiring professional skills and the labor market. This will be achieved through the following three sub-objectives.

Objective 1: Obtaining a structured overview of key players involved in teaching cybersecurity skills in upper secondary education in Austria: CLEMENTINE systematically identifies relevant actors in the Austrian education sector (education providers, education authorities, school administrators, interest groups, associations, etc.) and creates an overview of the relevant players. The overview provides the basis for creating networking and communication structures between actors to support the educational policy and school pedagogy discourse in the design of measures for cross-school cybersecurity skills training for 14-19-year-olds in Austria.

Objective 2: Identification of work-related cybersecurity topics and points of reference in secondary school curricula and teaching materials in Austria: The necessary cybersecurity skills from a labor market perspective are identified using the banking, energy, and retail sectors as examples. In addition, curricula and teaching materials are reviewed. Based on this and starting from generally relevant topics (e.g., phishing, use of cybersecurity tools, malware, network security), specific cybersecurity topics will be identified.

Objective 3: Development of exemplary didactic concepts for teaching cybersecurity topics and their links to secondary school education in Austria: Based on an analysis of curricula and teaching materials, as well as the current state of scientific research, exemplary didactic principles for teaching formats will be developed for a predefined selection of school types (e.g., AHS, BMHS, HTL) and teaching and learning contexts (e.g., use of digital media, methods). Care is taken to ensure that the proposed concept outlines tie in with the didactic requirements of the existing formats (basic digital literacy, etc.). In addition, the opportunities and limitations of integration options and the potential for adaptability of teaching content will be discussed, as the field of cybersecurity in particular is subject to constant change due to ever-new technical achievements (e.g., AI) and novel possibilities for cyberattacks.

The objectives are developed through desk research (current events, teaching materials, and didactic concepts), interviews with experts, focus groups with students, working groups, and stakeholder workshops.