The aim of this article is to shed critical light on the prevailing understanding of digital competence in schools and teacher education. There seems to be an emphasis on how to practice teaching with ICT throughout the Norwegian educational system. This article discusses and elaborates on the current approach, and argues for understanding digital competence from a broader perspective, by suggesting a framework for the notion of digital competence for teachers. This approach stresses teaching of, about, and with ICT.

This paper explores the knowledge and understanding of cyberethics held by preservice teachers across three European countries. The study was conducted via an online survey and yielded a total of 1,131 responses from preservice teachers in Spain, Norway, and Malta. The facets of cyberethics included in this study were specifically related to behaving responsibly online, safeguarding privacy, respecting copyright, seeking consent of third parties before posting images or videos on social media platforms, and considering their own professional identity as future teachers when posting images or videos online. The findings indicate that preservice teachers reported similar levels of competence in both applying copyright and respecting privacy rules. However, this varied across countries, with preservice teachers in Malta and Norway reporting higher levels of knowledge and awareness than their counterparts in Spain. Malta had the largest number of participants who reported that they ‘always’ considered the potential impact that posting media online may have on their careers, followed by Norway. Spain had the largest number of preservice teachers who stated that they rarely or never thought about this impact on their teaching career. Our findings highlight the need for student teachers’ knowledge of cyberethics to be prioritised during ITE, especially within the framework of developing a professional digital identity. In light of our findings, we recommend that all ITE programmes include digital competence and cyberethics components in their curricula. This would enable preservice teachers to develop an emerging professional and digital identity to face the challenges of becoming teachers in the 21st century.

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Teacher education has recently been criticised for not fulfilling its obligation to adequately prepare teachers to utilise digital tools in the classroom. In this paper, we raise the question of why Norwegian teacher education does not prepare student teachers to integrate digital tools into their teaching as required by the Norwegian curriculum. We question the formal premises governing the development of digital competence in teacher education and how they correspond with the requirements of the Norwegian national education curriculum. To gain insight into this question, we analysed how digital competence is presented in the official key documents that create the framework for teacher education, and compared them to the requirements of the Norwegian National Curriculum. Our findings indicate that there is a weak link between the curriculum and the premises for digital competence in teacher education.

Teacher education has recently been criticised for not fulfilling its obligation to adequately prepare teachers to utilise digital tools in the classroom. In this paper, we raise the question of why Norwegian teacher education does not prepare student teachers to integrate digital tools into their teaching as required by the Norwegian curriculum. We question the formal premises governing the development of digital competence in teacher education and how they correspond with the requirements of the Norwegian national education curriculum. To gain insight into this question, we analysed how digital competence is presented in the official key documents that create the framework for teacher education, and compared them to the requirements of the Norwegian National Curriculum. Our findings indicate that there is a weak link between the curriculum and the premises for digital competence in teacher education.