A Comparison Between Digital Competence in Two Nordic Countries’ National Curricula and an International Framework: Inspecting their Readiness for 21st Century Education

Abstract

This study investigates the objectives and competence aims in the digital competence curricula of two Nordic countries for compulsory education and an international framework, DIGCOMP. The main aim of the study is to analyze the visions and main features of the Norwegian and Swedish national curricula, and inspect the extent to which they align with the DIGCOMP framework. The results show that the underlying visions and objectives of the frameworks largely converge. However, there are large discrepancies between the national curricula and DIGCOMP regarding the structure, the content covered (e.g., competence aims) and the instructional aspects. The findings and their implications for researchers, policy makers and curriculum developers are discussed.