Innovative pedagogical practice with ICT in three Nordic countries – differences and similarities

Abstract

Three Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway, participated in the IEA SITES 2006 study.All the three countries have launched huge policy and investment programmes to promote digital literacy and readiness for the information age. In relation to the remarkable Finnish Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, it is interesting to see if the Finnish school system may be better suited to ground and contextualize pedagogical practice with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) than the Danish and Norwegian counterparts. One main difference is that the Finnish system seems to anchor decisions about and interpretations on how ICT should be utilized stronger at the local level than the two other systems. One of the general goals in the policy programmes is to get teachers to innovate with ICT in the classrooms. The Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES) 2006 indicators for two innovative pedagogical orientations, lifelong learning orientation and connectedness are utilized to compare teachers from the three nations. The main findings is that Finnish teachers are either not differing or they are scoring significantly lower on the two indicators than teachers from Denmark or Norway. The exception is Finnish science teachers who are more inclined towards using ICT in lifelong learning practices than their Danish and Norwegian counterparts. Generally, the Finnish teachers seem to be more autonomous in their pedagogical choices but may also be more conservative than the Danish and Norwegian teachers in making use of ICT.

Policy impacts on pedagogical practice and ICT use: an exploration of the results from SITES 2006

“…In Denmark and Norway, there have also been very strong education policy support and investment programmes to promote digital literacy and readiness for the information age (Ottestad 2009). However, Bryderup, Larson and Trentel (2009) report a change in educational policy in Denmark where a mostly reform‐oriented policy is being replaced by an increased interest in tests and subject‐related matters, which may account for the decrease in that the presence of reform‐oriented practice as reported by principals in Denmark.…”

On the issues of digital competence in educational contexts – a review of literature

“…In the review, several concluding remarks point at the emerging need of policy actions related to digital competence at all levels of the educational system (Wastiau et al 2013). As shown by Ottestad (2010), while pupils' digital competence seems to be clearly formulated in policies, TPD to meet the need of those learners is not realized uniformly and differences among interpretations, activities and approaches to enhance teachers' digital competence occurs. Similar conclusions were made in the literature on teacher education, in which researchers point at digital competence as not being anchored in the steering documents (e.g., Engen et al 2015).…”

“…A third sub-theme relates to what extent digital competence is formulated in policy (Engen et al 2015;Moore-Adams et al 2016;Ottestad 2010;Vanderlinde and van Braak 2011;Wastiau et al 2013). Acknowledging that digital competence (both on and off) is integrated in policy-related documents, there seems to be a coherent call for additional policies and actions.…”

Spremenjene pedagoške prakse z uporabo IKT

“…Tako v izobraževalni politiki kot v raziskovanju prepoznavamo potrebo po reformi izobraževanja, ki bi omogočila prehod od tradicionalnih pristopov k učenju in poučevanju k bolj inovativnim oblikam pedagoških praks (Ottestad, 2010). Ta prenovljeni fokus označuje premik k pedagogikam, ki se osredotočajo na učenca, oziroma premik od poučevanja k učenju in novim vlogam učitelja.…”