PurposeThe paper aims to investigate and describe the complex and dynamic dilemmas teachers are facing connected to students' net-based out-of-school activities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on the notion of dilemmatic spaces when thematically analyzing focus group interviews conducted with 41 teachers at three lower secondary schools in Sweden.FindingsTwo themes capture the teachers' dilemmas concerning their students´ net-based out-of-school activities: negotiations of content and negotiations of professional identity. When teachers take part in professional discussions where dilemmatic spaces are recognized, rather than focusing on either being for or against digitalization, they are enabled to express a multifaceted view of professional identity.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is a starting point for further studies investigating how pedagogical and didactic decisions are made in a digital time.Practical implicationsThe findings are expected to be helpful to policymakers in understanding teachers' work. Also, teachers can be empowered by taking the departure in the findings and discussing how to handle dilemmas fruitfully.Originality/valueIn a rapidly changing digital society, it is important to investigate what dilemmas teachers face in their work in order to learn from them. This study is a significant contribution.

In a digital society, teachers are required to carry out policy directives on both core knowledge and more vaguely described cross-curricular competences, one being digital competence. This paper reports on the findings of a study in which 41 teachers from three lower secondary schools in Sweden engaged in focus group interviews where they participated in sensemaking processes on students’ digital competence. The questions targeted what the teachers knew of their students’ digital experiences and how to facilitate and further develop these students’ digital competence. Based on the focus group interviews, four themes were identified: critical awareness, tool management, creativity, and avoidance of digital usage. Absent were themes related to democratic digital citizenship. The paper discusses the importance of moving away from a one-sided focus on individual teachers’ professional digital competence in favour of focusing on how school organizations can negotiate and facilitate students’ digital competence in local situ. Otherwise, there is a risk of overlooking students’ cross-curricular digital competence and digital citizenship. This paper is a starting point for further research on how school as an organization can support teachers in facilitating various areas of students’ digital competence in a digital society.