Educating for Professional Digital Competence? Exploring Teacher Education in a New Learning Space

Abstract

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.