The paper focuses on some overall trends in Norwegian curricular texts and governmental papers from the 1980s to present, and the main topic of interest has been how the use of new technology is described. The analysis of these texts to a large extent confirm a quite radical shift within the educational system, in which ”teaching” to a significant degree has been replaced by ”learning”. Similarly, educational technology introduced as ”the teacher’s aide” has increasingly been presented as ”tools for learning”. In both instances teaching and the role of the teacher are being marginalised. This is also the case concerning the traditional text books. The hypothesis is that this shift is related to a wider context of societal change, but also that the public rhetoric connected to the use and promotion of ICT has made a significant impact in this change. From the time of the introduction of the personal computer in the early 1980s the new technological devices and programmes to a large extent have been promoted along with visions of student activity and user control. The focus was put on learning rather than teaching, and the concepts of “teaching” and “learning” were often introduced as a dichotomy, to a large extent based on quite simple stereotypes of the two phenomena. Teaching was put forward as something bad we had to get rid of and learning something good that we have to promote. The shift is furthermore accompanied by an increased portion of perspectives where the educational system is seen and reflected upon from the outside. This is most clearly expressed within the governmental papers presenting the plans for the use of ICT in Norwegian schools. To an increasing degree references are made to the overall national plans for introducing and making use of ICT on large scale in society, not at least to make the country an active partner in the new global markets. The broad didactical reflections based on the unique criteria of the educational system and to a large degree a part of the first governmental plan presented in the 1980s, diminish correspondingly. The main theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis has been discourse analysis. First of all the works of the German historian Reinhart Koselleck and the British linguist Norman Fairclough have been a great inspiration. An important starting point and influence regarding the interest in the concepts of teaching and learning has been Gert Biesta and his influential contributions on “The new language of learning”.

The analysis of Norwegian curricular texts and governmental papers from the 1980s to present to a large extent confirm a quite radical shift within the educational system, in which ”teaching” to a significant degree has been replaced by ”learning”. Similarly, educational technology introduced as ”the teacher’s aide” has increasingly been presented as ”tools for learning”. In both instances teaching and the role of the teacher are being marginalised.