Abstract
We investigate how digital competences are being integrated into teacher education (TE) across the Nordic countries - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland in this article. We make the case that there has been an expansion of the agenda for digital competences in education. Digital competences have developed from an information and communication technology perspective to also include a critical, social, and creative understanding of digital technologies and computing competences. Methodologically, we make use of doc-ument analyses, qualitative questionnaires, and interviews with participants in the field. With an emphasis on Danish TE, we explore how TE in the Nordic countries has responded to this agenda on policy and institutional levels. We suggest that the Danish approach to the expanded agenda can augment tendencies and challenges in Nordic responses to digitalisation in TE. A key finding is that Nordic countries respond to the expanded agenda in different ways regarding policy regulation, content areas, and how digital com-petences are organised and distributed on a local level. Tendencies and challenges identified across Nordic countries are valuable to ensure the continual development of teachers’ digital competences.
Highlights
Digitalisation of education should be understood as formed by various understandings, interests, and agendas, according to sociologist of education Neil Selwyn
This article describes an expansion of the agenda for digital competences in Teacher education (TE)
This expansion is reflected in international strategies, political initiatives, and frameworks, and the international movement of including programming and computational thinking in schools
Summary
Digitalisation of education should be understood as formed by various understandings, interests, and agendas, according to sociologist of education Neil Selwyn. Basic digital skills and competences are described as needed from an early age and include digital literacy, computing education, and knowledge and understanding of data-intensive technologies (European Commission, 2020). An evaluation conducted by the Danish Agency for Research and Education found that even though digital learning materials and IT are included in the competence goals for each subject, there is a significant difference in how systematically and to what extent University Colleges integrate these aspects into the curriculum (Styrelsen for Forskning og Uddannelse, 2018). Technology Comprehension comprises four competency areas: digital empowerment, computational thinking, technology capability, and working with digital design and design processes (Caeli & Bundsgaard, 2020) The initiation of this experiment is a core initiative in the Danish computing education agenda. Throughout the paper, we use the module as a case to discuss and highlight tendencies and differences across Nordic TE
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