The authors of this article have collaborated as part of a steering group for Norwegian state-funded research and development project designed to enhance the professional digital competence (PDC) of both teacher educators, practising, and student teachers. In this article, we give voice to students’ experiences of their PDC development during teacher education (TE). We investigate their ideas on how TE might be developed to prepare them better for professional careers in a digital context. The participants are studying at a Norwegian university where, from 2018 to 2021, PDC has become a major area of focus as part of the aforementioned project. The data consist of four group interviews with 17 students from different campuses. We find that student teachers employ a broad range of digital technologies during TE. They experience a diversity of digital didactical practices and engage in thematic discussions concerning digitalization. They also utilise many technologies and apply the digital knowledge they have acquired in their personal lives. While some of them request more technical support during TE, most want to see TE engaging them in more critical discussions about the educational opportunities and challenges that digitalization offers. We discuss some of the dilemmas that TE must address to respond to these findings. In particular, we elaborate on how students’ digital experiences can be used as a resource when preparing for their professional roles as teachers.
The Norwegian school system gives a high priority to information and communication technology (ICT), and its ICT density is high, with one laptop per student considered desirable and being nearly accomplished. This study seeks to find the reasons for aspects of Norwegian teachers' pedagogical behaviour and choices by focusing on their thoughts and practices in technology-rich classrooms and by analysing how they explain them. It aims to enhance our understanding of how teachers in leading-edge schools appreciate the possibilities of a technology-rich environment, using theories about teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge as a framework. The informants in this study had worked as teachers in upper secondary schools for at least five years and were categorised as digitally competent. Interviews conducted early in the study showed them struggling to explain their ICT use because teaching is a complex activity and ICT can not be isolated from it. To increase the validity of the study it was therefore necessary to employ a more composite research method, collecting data from the researchers' and the schools' reports and from development work with ICT, interviews with teachers, videotaped lessons, videotaped discussions with teachers after lessons, and videotaped discussions involving teachers sharing their reflections with colleagues. The study shows that if teachers do not feel comfortable with changes, teaching practices stay the same. At the same time these teacher have developed, and have continued to develop, a digital pedagogical content knowledge which seems to be necessary in the digitised school of today.
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