A glimpse of a Nordic model? Policy and practice in the digitalisation of the K-12 school and teacher education in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden: Editorial introduction

Abstract

The research symposium Teaching and Teacher Education in the Light of the Digitalised K-12 school – a Nordic Perspective, held in October 2019 at Umeå University, Sweden, was the third in a series of symposiums organised by the authors of this editorial to address broad-term challenges and possibilities concerning the digitalisation in K-12 schools and in teacher education. The included papers in this special issue of the Education Inquiry originate from this symposium. The first symposium, International Symposium on Informed Design of Educational Technologies – Enhanced Learning and Teaching, took place in October 2012 (Olofsson & Lindberg, 2012). The second symposium in October 2017 had a specific focus on Recent Trends in the Digitalisation of Nordic K-12 schools (Lindberg & Olofsson, 2018). While working on the special issue, a fourth symposium held in November 2020 specifically concerned Swedish and Norwegian Teacher Education in a Time of a Digital Transformation of Society. As the four abovementioned symposiums indicate, in a Nordic context, the question of digital technology in teaching and teacher education per se is not new, neither is it new in research (e.g. Caeli & Bundsgaard, 2019; Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018; Ilomäki, Paavola, Lakkala, & Kantosalo, 2016; Olofsson, Lindberg, Hauge, & Fransson, 2015) or educational practice and policy (e.g. in Denmark, Strategy for Denmark’s Digital Growth, 2018; in Finland, The National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Education, 2019; in Norway, Digitalisation strategy for primary and lower secondary schools, 2017; and in Sweden, #skolDigiplan, 2019). Interestingly, the literature indicates that educational policies often emphasise the potential of digital technology to reform or even transform teaching, learning and assessment, but research reports that digital technology has not yet had the positive impact expected from policy (see Hammond, 2014; Vrasidas, 2015; Wastiau et al., 2013). With that in mind, we wanted the 2019 symposium to be an event aimed at identifying and exploring signs of a socalled Nordic model of building digital competence and improving digital technology use in the contexts of K-12 school and teacher education. The event was to support joint academic efforts to investigate what the Nordic countries potentially have in common and how we together can improve and develop various issues in theory, as well as policy and practice, concerning digital competence and the uptake and use of digital technology in teaching and teacher education. Former research in this field of interest indicates that elucidating such a thing as a Nordic model or a specific educational dimension to unite the Nordic countries is a rather challenging endeavour (cf. Blossing, Imsen, & Moos, 2014; Imsen, Blossing, & EDUCATION INQUIRY 2021, VOL. 12, NO. 4, 311–316 https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2021.1988451