In response to developing economic and social needs of countries across the EU, elements of computer science have entered primary school programmes of work. These new curricula aim to provide a high quality education in the burgeoning field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), empowering pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world.

Although in the near future we can expect the first ‘digitally native’ teachers, the present situation is that there is a discernible gap in confidence and competence between current teachers and their pupils (Prensky, 2001), creating a challenge for professional development. This paper reports on the groundwork of a major Erasmus+ project, Robo21C, designed to provide some resolution to overarching issues of European curriculum implementation in the fields of information technology in general and robotics and programming more specifically.

The project, drawing on experiences in Denmark, Lithuania, Spain, Malta and the UK, aims to support serving teachers and influence the content of  initial teacher education, whilst at the same time making positive impact upon the developing interests and skills of pupils within the primary age range of 4 -11/12 years. These skills are based upon the ‘4Cs’ of 21st century skills: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Critical thinking (Trilling and Fadel, 2009).

This paper reports on a trans-European curriculum mapping exercise, designed to determine where, when and how learning outcomes are specified, prepared, taught and assessed within the national and local primary school curricula of the partner countries. Commonalities and discrepancies in the national documents are described, with particular regard to ICT in general and computation and robotics in particular. The codified data are set within a theoretical framework of professional knowledge and competence, supported by a review of relevant research literature and national monitoring on teacher confidence and competence in this area, and thus acts as a needs analysis for learners and for training. A design platform is provided through this study for the instructional courses in computation and robotics for teachers to be rolled out as the major project intervention. Particular attention is paid to the detail and transferability of the data in order best to serve local needs.

In this study we provide design evidence for effective:

• development of 20th Century teachers’ professional knowledge for preparation and delivery of 21st Century skills in learning and ICT for pupils;

• coverage of new elements of ICT curricular content in computer programming and robotics;

• provision of  new subject and pedagogic knowledge to support the use of robotics and programming in the primary age range;

• enhancement of programmes of study to produce age-relevant resources, schemes of work and skills progression;

• exploration of  ways of combining and generating creativity with logic;

• understanding from pupils’ viewpoints of the purpose of learning these new skills;

• development of both independent and cooperative learning: the 4Cs.

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Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1–6 Trilling, B and Fadel, C. (2009) 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times. Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint. ISBN 978-0-470-47538-6