National Policy on Preschool Teachers’ Digital Competence in Finland, Sweden, and Norway: DigCompEdu as an Analytical Boundary Object

Abstract

Comparative research on teachers’ digital competence has focused on compulsory schooling, leaving early childhood education and care largely unexamined. This study examines how national policy in Finland, Sweden, and Norway constructs the digital competence expected of preschool teachers. Nine national policy documents published between 2017 and 2024 (three per country) were subjected to directed qualitative content analysis, with the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) serving as the analytic lens. Although the documents share a vocabulary of critical, responsible, and creative use, none is structured around DigCompEdu; divergence emerges as the dominant pattern. Norway supplies a school-oriented, non-statutory framework addressed to teachers. In the same period, Finland and Sweden embedded digital expectations within learner-facing curricula as collective responsibilities of the teaching team – an expectation Sweden subsequently withdrew in 2025. Normative framing also differs: Finnish policy conveys ambition, Norwegian policy emphasises precaution, and Swedish policy exhibits a restrictive turn reflected in the 2025 revised curriculum, a text outside the coded corpus but examined through a targeted post-corpus comparison. None of the three countries has developed a professional digital competence framework designed specifically for early childhood education and care teachers. DigCompEdu is employed here as an analytical boundary object – a stable external reference that renders the three national policy configurations comparable. Early-years policy guidance is, therefore, better grounded in the sector’s own categories—pedagogical documentation, children’s permission, and professional judgement—than in frameworks transferred from compulsory schooling.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.9.10