Ann-Thérèse Arstorp

Around the world, education systems are grappling with how to prepare students for a rapidly changing digital society. Global frameworks such as the OECD Student Agency 2030 (OECD 2019) and UNESCO’...

Norwegian and Danish policy and development regarding digital competence and digital technology have historically had a similar focus on the implementation of digital competence in the educational sector and specifically in teacher education (TE). Both countries have managed to give schools extensive access to technology and internet and put it high on the political agenda. In recent years, Norway and Denmark have introduced new concepts that differ but share the objective of preparing students for an ever-changing future. In Norway, the concept of teachers’ professional digital competence has been introduced in teacher education, while in Denmark, the concept of technology comprehension has been introduced both in teacher education and in schools. The question remains how these two concepts compare when broken down and how the findings compare to other international and European frameworks and research. The study shows that these Scandinavian perspectives have a strong element of digital Bildung, suggesting an orientation toward ontological ambitions related to digital technology. This Scandinavian take on digital competence could be relevant for researchers and policymakers outside Scandinavia.

This paper examines the role of digital technology in national guidelines and regulations in Norwegian and Danish teacher education over the course of 28 years (1992–2020). These policy documents are used to examine policy perspectives on digital technology through an analytical framework based on Wartofsky’s artifact categories. The analytical categories developed for this study are tool artifacts, teacher professional artifacts and discursive artifacts. The results show that the different categories dominate at different times. The Norwegian policy documents indicate an increase in teacher professional artifacts and a decrease in tool artifacts over time, whereas the Danish policy documents show the opposite tendency. Discursive artifacts are absent in Danish policy documents while their presence diminishes over time in the Norwegian policy documents. As teachers, and ITE in particular, are still struggling to realise educational policy aims, there is still a need for direction, this absence seems to run counter to the goal of increasing PDC in ITE.

This paper explores policy related to digital competence and the digitalisation of Nordic K-12 schools. Anchored in some key transnational policies on digital competence, it describes some current Nordic movements in the national policies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The concept of boundary objects is used as an analytical lens, for understanding digital competence as a plastic and temporal concept that can be used to discuss the multi-dimensional translation of this concept in these Nordic countries. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential to view digital competence as a unifying boundary object that, with its plasticity, temporality and n-dimensionality, can show signs of common Nordic efforts in the K-12 school policy.