Abstract
ABSTRACT In Sweden, adequate digital competence has been put in the spotlight due to the Swedish 2017 national strategy for the digitalisation of the K-12 school system. Based on both policy and practice, the aim is to explore teachers’ enacted digital competence in three upper secondary schools in Sweden and thereby provide an empirical account of what the notion ‘adequate’ means in practice. The data consists of interviews with teachers and classroom observations. At an aggregated analytical level, the results are presented as four narrative sub-case descriptions. It is concluded that teachers’ adequate digital competence is flexible in meaning, determined by local contextual conditions and enacted in activities and decisions that are based on the teachers’ own value frameworks. The understanding of ‘adequate’ in this study does not appear to be clarified in the formulations used in the national strategy.
Highlights
There has been an increase in the use of digital technology in European K-12 schools over the last decade (Olofsson, Lindberg, and Fransson 2017)
Research reports that the use of digital technology in school does not seem to have had the positive impact on teaching and learning that was expected at policy level (Hammond 2014) and that there is a need of further research on how policy
Adequate digital competence in the Swedish upper secondary schools reported on in this article seems to be flexible in meaning, is determined by the local contextual conditions and is enacted in various activities, understandings and decisions based on the teachers’ own framework of values
Summary
There has been an increase in the use of digital technology in European K-12 schools over the last decade (Olofsson, Lindberg, and Fransson 2017). Digital tablets and Learning Management Systems (LMS) are all examples of commonly used technologies (Håkansson-Lindqvist 2015). The increased use of digital technology for teaching and learning in the K-12 classroom can, at an international (OECD 2015) and a national Swedish educational policy level, be seen as a sought after and welcome change (Government Inquiry 2014, 13). According to Håkansson Lindqvist (2015), educational policies often emphasise the potential of digital technology to reform or even transform teaching and learning practices in K-12 school contexts. Research reports that the use of digital technology in school does not seem to have had the positive impact on teaching and learning that was expected at policy level (Hammond 2014) and that there is a need of further research on how policy
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