The increasing prevalence of Generative AI (GenAI) in education offers significant opportunities for advancements in instructional design and educational innovation. GenAI tools, like ChatGPT, are poised to transform teacher education by reshaping instructional techniques, learning strategies, and assessment methods. However, there is limited research on educational institutions' responses to GenAI and teacher educators' readiness to adopt these tools. This study, part of a larger Delphi project, examines the adaptations needed in teacher education programmes to prepare teacher educators for an AI-driven future. Utilising an extensive online questionnaire, data from 138 teacher educators across Europe reveal a critical need for comprehensive support from institutions, highlighting the importance of developing essential AI competencies, adopting innovative pedagogical approaches, and creating policies that responsibly integrate GenAI. These findings provide a foundation for crafting forward-thinking strategies to harness GenAI's potential in enhancing 21st-century teaching and learning outcomes.

With growing expectations to use AI-based educational technology (AI-EdTech) to improve students’ learning outcomes and enrich teaching practice, teachers play a central role in the adoption of AI-EdTech in classrooms. Teachers’ willingness to accept vulnerability by integrating technology into their everyday teaching practice, that is, their trust in AI-EdTech, will depend on how much they expect it to benefit them versus how many concerns it raises for them. In this study, we surveyed 508 K-12 teachers across six countries on four continents to understand which teacher characteristics shape teachers’ trust in AI-EdTech, and its proposed antecedents, perceived benefits and concerns about AI-EdTech. We examined a comprehensive set of characteristics including demographic and professional characteristics (age, gender, subject, years of experience, etc.), cultural values (Hofstede’s cultural dimensions), geographic locations (Brazil, Israel, Japan, Norway, Sweden, USA), and psychological factors (self-efficacy and understanding). Using multiple regression analysis, we found that teachers with higher AI-EdTech self-efficacy and AI understanding perceive more benefits, fewer concerns, and report more trust in AI-EdTech. We also found geographic and cultural differences in teachers’ trust in AI-EdTech, but no demographic differences emerged based on their age, gender, or level of education. The findings provide a comprehensive, international account of factors associated with teachers’ trust in AI-EdTech. Efforts to raise teachers’ understanding of, and trust in AI-EdTech, while considering their cultural values are encouraged to support its adoption in K-12 education.

As schools become more digitalized, teachers need strong skills in teaching, learning, and administration. Some teachers, known as ICT coordinators, play a key role in promoting digital technology use, acting as liaisons between management and teaching. This study, based on a literature review and interviews with Norwegian ICT coordinators over five years, found increasing diversity in their tasks and roles. With the rise of one-to-one digital device use (e.g., Chromebooks, iPads), the ICT coordinator's role is expected to grow in importance. The study highlights the complexity of this role and its future development.

The purpose of this study is to map trends in literature about digital school leadership over the last decades. Combining bibliometric and automatic content analyses, we map and analyze a sample of 350 documents, retrieved in Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) including titles and abstracts. The software VosViewer and Leximancer are used for analyses. Our sample is divided reflecting an early phase of digitalization in school (1992–2009), a phase of an increasing digitalization in school (2010–2020) and a phase of digitalization related to the Covid-19 pandemic (2021–2023). In general, the research literature on digital school leadership can be characterized as an emerging, fragmented, and inter-disciplinary field. Most literature is published after 2010 with an increase in publications after 2019, resulting in a peak in 2021. The literature is characterized by some influential highly connected authors revealing some changing thematic patterns over time. Further, findings highlight that when research on digital school leadership draws from various disciplines, this also indicates a need for a holistic and multifaceted approach. Scholars from different disciplines contribute to an updated understanding of digital school leadership. This interdisciplinary collaboration thus enriches the discourse, as it demonstrates how various perspectives may add new insights into the conceptualization of digital school leadership.

Addressing the identified lack of empirical evidence of how the transformative innovation policy (TIP) agenda is implemented in practice, this paper looks at how contemporary policy practices framed as TIP take into account and build upon existing systems of innovation in the global south. We do so by studying a development aid policy programme in Norway targeting the SDGs and transformative change in the global south. The findings show that priority is given to implementing and upscaling Western solutions and that there has been a subordinate orientation towards the local demand these solutions are meant to serve, and to the innovation systems they are meant to strengthen. Based on these findings, we discuss whether this form of technology transfer detached from local production- and innovation systems is the most effective way to secure long-term local capacity building and transformative change in the global south.

As societies are increasingly digitalised, digital competences are required—for citizens in general and within professions. In education, professional digital competence (PDC) for teachers has been on the research agenda for years. However, less is known about what constitutes PDC for school leaders. This paper adopts a qualitative approach to explore what constitutes school leaders’ PDC. It builds on previous studies of concepts of teachers’ PDC, digital transformations in education, and school leadership, supplemented by findings from two empirical studies on school leadership in schools with 1:1 coverage of digital devices. Based on this, the paper presents an initial conceptualisation of PDC for school leaders, illustrating how digital technologies impact both administrative and pedagogical leadership. The paper has merits for the research community interested in school leadership, digitalisation, professional digital competence, education, and schools.

Flexible technology-rich learning spaces such as Future Classroom Labs (FCL) have a large potential for developing teacher education (TE) students' professional digital competence through engaging in authentic collaborative learning experiences with digital technology. However, there are limited reports on how students perceive and enact the affordances existing in such learning spaces. This paper reports on how one such FCL can facilitate collaborative learning among TE students. The paper poses two research questions: 1) How does the FCL as a learning space accommodate for collaborative learning? and 2) How do the artefacts promote or limit collaboration among students at the FCL? The data were collected through observations of four sessions of group work at the FCL, each having a different group of 15-16 first-year TE students. The results suggest that the FCL promoted collaborative work in terms of finding and building groups, monitoring, and resource-sharing across the small groups. However, students depended on external guidance from a teacher or student assistant to understand the technical sides of the artefacts, and their educational potential. Therefore, the implication is that in their first visits to FCLs, students need guidance to get started with the distinct tasks, and to master the various devices.

Throughout Europe, governments have undertaken a series of policy initiatives to foster digitalization across the public sector. A key sector of society and the economy, higher education has also been the target of these trends, particularly since the outbreak of COVID-19. This chapter takes stock of ongoing developments in the Scandinavian context, using cases from Norway and Sweden. Conceptually, we focus on how agents within universities schematize, contextualize, and hypothesize social experiences in the context of past trajectories, ongoing dynamics, and future hopes and fears. The findings show that COVID-19 has had a significant, albeit diverse, effect on the digital transformation of Scandinavian universities. These findings provide important insights into the transformative effects that external shocks or crises have on change and adaptation across higher education as an organizational field.

A broader systemic framework pertaining to multiple manifestations at various scales and involving an increasing number of internal and external stakeholders was introduced in the first chapter of the volume, and further explored empirically in the following chapters. In this final chapter, the editors further discuss the complexity, dynamic, and multifaceted nature of the phenomenon under investigation, and add perspectives on how to expand future debates on digital transformations in higher education.

The main protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel is Klara, an artificial friend whose existential goal is to be a child’s companion. Some aspects of this fictional narrative have begun to gradually enter our daily lives. Products reminiscent of Klara are available abundantly on the market: smart toys, adaptive learning applications, and companion robots. Children can relate to these products and perform activities together with them. Preliminary research has shown fundamental differences between existing technologies and these emerging children’s digital companions. However, we still do not know much about their benefits and risks. This paper explores different and even contradicting perspectives on the phenomenon. We present the discussion from four perspectives - 1) temporality, 2) use, 3) trust and ethics, and 4) sociotechnical design - and conclude the paper with an agenda for interdisciplinary IS research. The agenda points to the need for a psychological, medical, engineering, and temporal research community to understand this emerging sociotechnical phenomenon and design its future for the better.

AbstractThe Norwegian government has played an active role in promoting digital transformation of higher education institutions (HEI), through national strategies, steering and funding as well as various types of support and coordination. Yet, delays have been observed between national ambitions and the take-up of digital technology in teaching and learning practices. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced a shock and a potential trigger for this transformation. In this chapter, we study the nature of the digital transformation of teaching and learning during the first phase of COVID-19 pandemic (spring 2020). The analysis is based on data from a large-scale survey among students and academic staff in Norwegian HEIs. Findings suggest a steep learning curve among faculty staff, guided by trial and error and a strong element of peer learning. We also observe multiple approaches towards online teaching, in line with the so-called emergency remote online teaching concept. As for the future “post-COVID” development, both students and staff seem to prefer campus-based teaching, yet they are positive towards adding more elements of digital resources to teaching. The implications of the findings are further discussed in relation to the ongoing policy debates on the future direction of digital higher education in Norway.

Undervisningsverkstedet, henceforth abbreviated as UV, constitutes a newer initiative within campus-based teacher education at a Norwegian university. It includes a location and resources for varied student-active teaching and aims to foster professional digital competence. The location has flexible furnishings and includes various digital and analogue resources. In an international context, this type of classroom is known as a ‘future classroom lab’ and originates from an initiative by the European Schoolnet. Over the years, these types of classrooms have spread across Europe, yet they mostly target schools and libraries. However, in 2022, several higher education institutions in the Nordics that offer teacher education have been establishing this type of learning environment. Taking a qualitative approach with interviews, we study teacher educators’ perceptions on how to promote professional digital competence for their students in this new type of learning space. Findings indicate that UV as a distinct learning space has the potential to transform and enhance the development of professional digital competence for teachers and students. Findings also demonstrate the value of campus-based learning and of new learning spaces. This is an important observation after the years of remote online teaching and learning caused by the pandemic. Moreover, our study demonstrates that the digital transformation of teacher education affects the role of the teacher, which again may also cause epistemic changes.

There is an increasing trend of 1:1 coverage of tablets in schools in Scandinavia. Several studies have reported on pedagogical possibilities and challenges, but less is reported about how this change is perceived and practised by other stakeholders. We interviewed public school owners and leaders in Norway and found school owners used various models to support their schools, and school leaders held varied views on their roles in promoting the implementing 1:1 coverage in schools. Considering these findings, we discuss whether establishing overall national guidelines might help school owners and school leaders to effect digital transformation in schools and whether such guidelines would support or counteract school leaders’ autonomy and ability to adapt the digital transformation to their local context.

Appears in: EDULEARN23 Proceedings Publication year: 2023Page: 437 (abstract only)ISBN: 978-84-09-52151-7ISSN: 2340-1117doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2023.0192Conference name: 15th International Conference on Education and New Learning TechnologiesDates: 3-5 July, 2023Location: Palma, Spain

Although there are numerous studies on the development of teachers’ professional digital competence, only a few have studied the intermediate levels of the education system and its impact over time. A structural merger of three Norwegian municipalities allowed for a natural field experiment involving two school districts. In the present study, we explored potential differences in early and late adopter effects on teachers from school districts. Survey data were collected to assess teacher-level perceptions of organisational support and access to collaborative professional communities. Teachers also rated themselves according to the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework for digital competence and answered questions to assess their level of student-centred teaching beliefs. The data were analysed using Structural Equation Model (SEM) to explore associations between study variables and patterns of differences between school districts. The results indicate that municipality- or school district-level initiatives have influenced the behaviour of school management and in the teacher community, and possibly result in a more student-centred teaching style in the classroom. The present paper adds new insights into how teachers and schools are influenced by the intermediate levels of the education system. The findings from our study may thus be of interest to researchers exploring the professional development of digital competence for teachers and schools. Moreover, as we highlight how school districts approach and support schools in the implementation of one-to-one coverage of digital devices in schools, we bring updated knowledge to this research field.

Digitalisation-related challenges and opportunities in higher education are not new, but awareness of their transformative potential has increased, with global trends including massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of technology-enhanced open education. The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the importance of flexible forms of teaching and learning, and, as a result, has intensified the adoption of technological platforms and solutions across the board. In this introductory chapter to the volume, the editors provide a state of the art on the topic of digital transformations, including clarifications on concepts and definitions, alongside the articulation of a systemic framework that considers the complexity, dynamic, and multifaceted nature of the phenomenon under investigation.

Drawing on the theory and conceptualizations of organizational readiness for change and taking a more critical approach to organizational readiness that takes seriously actors’ different and sometimes conflicting understandings of change and digital transformation processes, this chapter explores the implementation of digital tools and systems in Norwegian higher education (HE) prior to and following the outbreak of the COVID-19 global health pandemic. The analysis focuses on the challenges and bottlenecks associated with digital implementation in a complex environment by focusing on contextual and situational factors. The chapter investigates ongoing developments in Norwegian HE in the context of dynamics across the Nordic region, illuminating the micro-level practices, experiences, and responses to digital transformation of university actors at multiple levels in a Norwegian university selected as the main case study.

Initial teacher education plays a vital role in preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to integrate technology into their classroom practice. In the present study, we examine how PSTs perceive their professional digital competence (PDC) in the context of a major teacher education reform in Norway. Survey data was collected from two cohorts, consisting of primary and lower secondary PSTs, both before (cohort 1) and after (cohort 2) the teacher education reform. Several theoretical concepts were selected to operationalize PDC, including technological pedagogical knowledge, confidence in the use of ICT, ICT self-efficacy, perceived usefulness, and ICT and inclusion. The overall results show a significant increase in the pre-service teachers' professional digital competence in cohort 2. The findings indicate that partnership initiatives between university faculty staff and school-based mentor teachers are associated with the pre-service teachers' development of PDC. Several development initiatives in initial teacher education that are relevant to other higher education institutions are also discussed.

In recent years considerable emphasis has been placed on fostering students' computational thinking and programming skills through compulsory education. Norway is one of few countries where these skills are explicitly included in the curriculum for practical and aesthetical subjects. This paper concerns a qualitative study of potential barriers for teachers' adoption of programming in the subject A&C in Norwegian compulsory education. Preliminary findings suggest that a gap exists between the expectations from the curriculum concerning programming and CT in the subject art and crafts, and teachers' classroom practices.