Debattinlägg om digitaliseringen och skolan

Två kollegor från Norge och Sverige har tillsammans skrivit ett inlägg för att belysa diskussionen som pågår i dessa länder rörande skola och digitalisering.

Läs nedan vad professor Natalia I. Kucirkova från Universitet i Stavanger samt professor Italo Masiello från Linnéuniversitet har att säga! Inlägget är på engelska.

Sweden and Norway are consumed by ‘screen time’ fears instead of cross-sectoral collaboration possibilities.

Natalia I. Kucirkova (University of Stavanger) and Italo Masiello (Linnaeus University)

The running joke is that when it comes to innovation, the USA brings software, China hardware, and EU regulation. When it comes to Sweden and Norway, it seems that the two countries are rebranding current digital transformation discussions with outdated, unhelpful, and misguided, ‘screen time’ discussions. In the past weeks, the public, political, and scientific discourse on ‘screen time’, as well as the use of digital technologies for learning in K-12 education, have dominated the headlines in the two countries.

The Swedish Minister of Education decided to stop the draft proposal of the Digitalisation Strategy 2023-2027 of the school sector because, apparently, the new strategy is not backed up by scientific evidence. The Minister decided to follow the line of reasoning of a few scientists within the field of cognitive neuroscience, child medicine, and developmental psychology, who called for an immediate halt of the strategy. It is remarkable that the debates rage around strategies: strategies are only that – strategies – it is when plans and budgets are laid down that collaborations come into effect.

In Norway, the Minister of Education launched an expert group supposed to investigate the consequences of children’s use of screens. The move was criticized for pandering to the fears of middle-class parents worried about their children’s ‘screen time’. What the expert group will decide is not clear yet, especially not if we consider how complicated the word ‘screen use’ is.

International summaries of research and policy documents, such as this recent one from Australia on ‘screen time’ guidelines, highlight that the guidelines were developed “to fit within the paradigm of 24-hour movement behaviors. For screen guidance to be helpful and relevant to families, health and education professionals, service organizations, policymakers, and technology designers, the goal needs to change.”

As Selwyn has explained in a rebuke of the Minister’s decision, it is problematic when the government selectively mobilizes evidence to suit simplistic narratives of “good” and “bad” screen use. Well-defined policies are crucial for AI and for complex processes such as learning and digitalisation. This is not what we see in the two countries currently. Although often pitched against each other, there are more similarities than differences between Sweden and Norway, when it comes to the conditions for digital transformation in schools.

Both Sweden and Norway are small in population and highly technically developed, wealthy countries. The two neighbors have a high number of broadband subscribers, and citizens report high ownership of personal computers. In addition, most parents are well-educated, and schools provide free digital learning resources, as well as free internet. The two countries have a decentralized decision-making structure: local authorities run the schools, employ teachers, and make decisions about what technologies get purchased. Although curricula are national, they are relatively open to interpretation on the local level.

In both countries, teachers have large autonomy and responsibility to choose pedagogical methods and materials to work with. As the bulk of the research evidence and responses to the Digitalisation Strategy have pointed out, it is the teacher that is key: competence development and research should start by focusing on them while in the classroom and while studying to become teachers. We would like to see more collaboration and attention to this fact.

We also find several nuanced arguments by Norwegian and Swedish educational researchers, but these are not dominating the media headlines. For example, Erstad, Kjällander, and Järvelä (2021) developed a Nordic agenda for teachers’ digital competencies. Instead of using cross-sectoral collaboration as a condition for a practical agenda, the governments are reverting to black-and-white thinking. We call for the structure and thinking behind the Global EdTech Testbed Network, which brings together researchers, EdTech producers, policy-makers, funders, and schools through “testbeds”, to be emulated on a national level.