Digital competence in the subject of Swedish: conceptualizations in curricula

During the last decade, digital competence has become a core concept in policy making and in debates over the future of education since the role that schools may take in developing competences needed for citizenship in digitalized societies is debated globally. Currently, digital competence is used as a foundational concept in the re-formulation of curricula in Sweden (Regeringskansliet, U2015/04666/S). The curricular changes point in different directions, emphasizing the introduction of coding as well as critical, ethical and creative uses of technology.  This presentation explores how digital competence is conceptualized in recent changes in the curriculum for Swedish compulsory and upper secondary school. Based on a thematic content analysis of the changes in the curricula, aimed at supporting students’ digital competence, four themes have been identified; use of digital tools and media, programming, critical awareness and responsibility. The distribution of the thematic changes differs among the subjects but the most dominating theme concerns the tool-oriented use of digital tools and media. This strong dominance of operational perspective tends to narrow the conceptualization compared to international definitions and frameworks of digital competence.  Alterations in curricula and syllabi in the subject of Swedish are of particular interest in this presentation. Moreover, differences between the curricula for compulsory school and upper secondary school will be explored. Furthermore, the shift in concepts that appears to be taken place at the moment, where competence replaces the concept of literacy is discussed. Literacy refers to meaning making and the understanding of texts and has been expanded to include digital and multimodal texts (i.e. Street, 1998). Competence on the other hand tends to refer to wider issues of the digitalization of society and education. What does this shift in concepts mean for language subjects and how do the recent changes in curricula relate to the concepts of digital literacy and digital competence.