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The focus of this position paper is on the conceptualization of professional digital competence (PDC) in the teaching profession and its consequences for teacher education. The aim is to establish a concept that captures, challenges, and possibilities related to teaching and learning in technology-rich settings. By using three school subjects as cases, we argue the necessity of viewing PDC as comprising a deep understanding of technology, knowledge of students' learning processes, and an understanding of the specific disciplinary practices and features characterizing individual school subjects.

This paper reports on a study of teacher support in a setting where students engaged with computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in science. The empirical basis is an intervention study where secondary school students and their teacher performed a lab experiment in genetics supported by a digital learning environment. The analytical focus is on student-teacher interactions taking place in help-seeking settings during group-based activities where students analysed and reported their findings from the lab experiment. A combination of quantitative methods in the form of frequency counts of students' help requests and detailed micro-analyses of student-teacher interactions are used. The findings are that the majority of challenges faced by students concerned conceptually oriented issues and procedural challenges in the sense of how to practically solve the assignments provided to them in the digital learning environment. Most importantly, the analyses of student-teacher interactions provide insight into the considerable amount of support that is needed from the teacher to bridge the conceptual gap between the lab experiment and the students' understanding of the underlying scientific principles and procedures. The findings are discussed according to possible implications for the design of digital support tools and instruction.

This article reports on a study concerning secondary school students' meaning-making of socioscientific issues in Information and Communication Technology-mediated settings. Our theoretical argument has as its point of departure the analytical distinction between 'doing science' and 'doing school,' as two different forms of classroom activity. In the study we conducted an analysis of students working with web-based groupware systems concerned with genetics. The analysis identified how the students oriented their accounts of scientific concepts and how they attempted to understand the socio-scientific task in different ways. Their orientations were directed towards finding scientific explanations, towards exploring the ethical and social consequences, and towards 'fact-finding.' The students' different orientations seemed to contribute to an ambivalent tension, which, on the one hand, was productive because it urged them into ongoing discussions and explicit meaning-making. On the other hand, however, the tension elucidated how complex and challenging collaborative learning situations can be. Our findings suggest that in order to obtain a deeper understanding of students' meaning-making of socio-scientific issues in Information and Communication Technology-mediated settings, it is important not only to address how students perform the activity of 'doing science.' It is equally important to be sensitive with respect to how students orient their talk and activity towards more or less explicit values, demands, and expectations embedded in the educational setting. In other words, how students perform the activity of 'doing school.'

This paper reports on a case study of the teacher's role as facilitator in computer‐supported collaborative learning (CSCL) settings in science. In naturalistic classroom settings, the teacher most often acts as an important resource and provides various forms of guidance during students’ learning activities. Few studies, however, have focused on the role of teacher intervention in CSCL settings. By analyzing the interactions between secondary school students and their teacher during a science project, the current study provides insight into the concerns that teachers might encounter when facilitating students’ learning processes in these types of settings. The analyses show that one main concern was creating a balance between providing the requested information and supporting students in utilizing each other's knowledge and understanding. Another concern was balancing support on an individual versus group level, and a third concern was directing the students’ attention to coexisting conceptual perspectives. Most importantly, however, the analyses show how teacher intervention constitutes the pivotal “glue” that aids students in linking and using coexisting aspects of support such as peer collaboration, digital tools, and instructional design.