This article examines of the embeddedness of Bildung, competence, digitalisation, and sustainable development in the applicable teacher education policy in Norway. It is in teacher education programmes that future teachers are educated to teach the applicable curriculum. The contention is that teacher education policy needs to be aligned with curriculum policy for it to be relevant for future teachers’ education. While the term ‘competence’, generally defined as a mobilization of knowledge, skills and attitudes, is central in the curriculum policy in many countries, most often as a result of promotion by transnational actors such as the UNESCO or the OECD, as well as the European Commission in the European context, the concept of Bildung has been primarily developed and adopted as a policy goal in Continental and Nordic Europe (Author & co-author, 2020; Author, 2023). Bildung envisions a more holistic education of students aiming for developing their autonomy in decision making, participation in democratic processes and contributing to reducing inequalities in society (Klafki, 1998; Humboldt, 1793/2000). In this regard, the aim of the article is to examine conceptions of Bildung and competence in teacher education policy in Norway, as a country that applies these two concepts in its curriculum policy. In addition, Norway has embraced integration of digital skills and sustainable development in its education to a large extent since 2000s, and the article addresses also how the idea of digitalisation of society and sustainable development are integrated in the applicable teacher education policy. The main research question is: 1) What conceptions of, and to what extent, Bildung, competence, digitalisation and sustainable development are embedded in teacher education policy in Norway? The overarching goal is to unpack to what extent are the four concepts of interest incorporated in the Norwegian teacher education policy, when all four are given substantial priority in the Norwegian curriculum policy. Theoretically, the article follows the notion that education policies are inherently future-oriented. When developed through a democratic process, they represent a consensus on solutions to a problem that needs addressing. It is argued that teacher education policy in Norway is a result of a democratic and consensus-based process that attempts to align visions of future (teacher) education to wider cultural, social and political frames of references. Future-oriented visions of education are part of what Oomen et al. (2022) call ‘acts of futuring’. These include the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to be promoted and in turn, to be socially performed. Acts and techniques of futuring is defined as ‘the identification, creation and dissemination of images of the future shaping the possibility space for action, thus enacting relationships between past, present and future’ (Oomen et al., pp. 253-254). Thus, the conceptions of Bildung and competence, as well as embeddedness of digitalisation and sustainable development in teacher education policy, are viewed as markers of images of the future that become socially performative by stakeholders involved in implementing the teacher education programmes.  Further, the study also applies ‘knowledge-for, -in, and -of practice’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999), developed within the field of teacher education, to capture what knowledge orientations are given priority in the recent teacher education policy in Norway when elaborating on Bildung, competence, digitalisation, and sustaible development.

The article is based on qualitative methodology, and adopts constructionism as an epistemological perspective, which in turn, relies on the view that reality in the social arenas is socially constructed (Crotty, 1998). Further, it applies reading and document analysis to engage in an in-depth analysis, synthesis and interpretation of the data material related to the research question. Specifically, the analysis spiral procedure (Creswell, 2013) is applied, which relies on reading, coding, categorizing, and interpreting to analyse, code and interpret the extracted text from the policy documents. Three applicable teacher education policy documents in Norway and two white papers are included in the analysis. The policy documents focus on primary and lower secondary education for years 5-10 (NCTE, 2024; NMER 2018, 2016). The three documents [all originally in Norwegian] represent 1) the legal framework for teacher education for years 5-10 (NMER, 2016); 2) the national strategy for quality and cooperation in teacher education in Norway (NMER, 2017,); and 3: the national guidelines for primary and lower secondary teacher education programme for years 5-10 (NCTE, 2024). The two white papers include one focusing on the profession-oriented education in Norway (NMER, 2024a) and the other one on notions of a ‘more practical school’ (NMER, 2024b). A data extraction process is applied using an analytical matrix that allowed for capturing definitions and arguments, if any, of ‘Bildung’, ‘competence’, ‘digitalisation/digital skills/digital competence’, and sustainable development (using corresponding terms in Norwegian ‘danning’, ‘kompetanse’ ‘digitalisering/digitale ferdigheter/digital kompetanse’, ‘bærekraftig utvikling’] in the corresponding teacher education policy documents and white papers.

The main finding was that three of four concepts of interest of the study – Bildung, competence, digitalisation – are embedded in all three policy documents selected for the study. ‘Sustainable development’ is addressed only in NCTE (2024). Another finding was that there is a close alignment across the policy documents, especially between the legal framework (NMER, 2016) and the national guidelines for primary and lower secondary teacher education programmes for years 5-10. Yet, another finding was that ‘competence’ is by far the most used concept, indicating a discourse of outcome-oriented policy in teacher education that is also observed in curriculum policy (Author & co-author, 2020). The policies also highlight a conception of ‘professional digital competence’ as a requirement for all future teachers in light of the requirement in the curriculum policy for pupils’ development of digital skills. Further, sustainable development is framed in the NCTE (2024) document in the context of general knowledge that future teachers need to have in order to promote sustainable development among their future pupils. Regarding the two white papers, the results show that, competence, again, is by far the most used term, followed with digitalisation, and with very infrequent mention of Bildung and sustainable development. With Oomen at al. (2022), it is argued that visions of education as exemplified in the four concepts of interest in the Norwegian teacher education policy documents and white papers are expected to become socially performative in diverse education arenas, such as universities where teacher education programmes are offered, and schools, where future teachers meet their pupils. The work regarding knowledge orientations as per Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) is under way.

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