Why Are Norwegian Education Authorities Digitising Education?: An Analysis of Political Arguments in Policy Documents

Abstract

Western education authorities have, in recent decades, massively pushed to implement ‘digital skills’ in education. The arguments for implementing digital skills as part of curricula are often vague. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the political arguments concerning ‘digital skills’ in Norwegian upper-secondary-school education policy. This study is ‘Fairclough inspired’, as my main concern was studying the meaning content of the various texts that make up this study’s data material. Selected excerpts from education policy documents were analysed to identify which main political arguments and rhetoric related to digital skills are evident in these texts. A selection of 20 Norwegian white papers, curricula and Norwegian Official Reports was analysed from the 1990s to the introduction of the new national curriculum, The New Knowledge Promotion (LK20), in 2020. This article’s key findings show that, since the early 1990s, Norwegian education authorities have harboured substantial technological optimism. This study also shows that white papers’ digital skills–related policy discourses regarding Norwegian upper secondary schools have been dominated by capitalist and neo-liberal perspectives. These perspectives are particularly evident in white papers from 2013 to when the school reform’s core elements were introduced in LK20 in 2020.