Navigating the contradictions of digital transformation: policy enactments of professional digital competence

Abstract

This study examines how teachers are positioned as both agents and subjects within the discursive field of digital transformation. As education reforms in Nordic countries prioritise digitalisation, teacher professionalism is mobilised to mediate technology integration. In Norway, this is articulated through the policy construct of professional digital competence (PDC). Drawing on interview data from a Norwegian municipality’s professional development initiative, the analysis explores how teachers, as local policy actors, rearticulate policy discourses within their work contexts. Rather than treating PDC as a fixed set of competencies, the study approaches it as a contingent and contested construct enacted through discursive practices shaped by institutional constraints, technological infrastructures, and affective investments. Two dominant enactments of PDC emerge: teachers as controllers of devices and as purposeful users of devices. These modalities overlap, reflecting tensions between control and innovation, autonomy and accountability. By foregrounding the discursive and material conditions of policy enactment, the study offers a nuanced understanding of how digital transformation is negotiated in schools. It argues for a shift in perspective—from viewing PDC as an individualised skillset to recognising it as a dynamic process of constructing capacities within a sociotechnical landscape.