A study of the use of digital technology and its conditions with a view to understanding what ‘adequate digital competence’ may mean in a national policy initiative

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.

"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. If it is thought that a high level of adequate digital competence in school requires an exemplary digital school practice, it can be concluded that such a practice can at least be characterised by good technological infrastructure, teachers with a high level of technological-pedagogical knowledge, ongoing teacher CPD and a well-functioning technology-mediated communication and administration. However, at the same time, it can also be concluded that the elaborated understanding of “adequate” in this study does not always seem to clarify the formulations used in the national strategy for the digitalisation of the K-12 school system in Sweden." (Authors, 740)