Digital Bildung: Norwegian Students’ Understanding of Teaching and Learning with ICT

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on how students perceive their own learning and democratic development in relation to their digital interactions and competencies. This paper seeks an understanding of students’ perspectives on digital Bildung. We investigate these issues by comparing different notions of Bildung perspectives among young students from four Norwegian schools. The study consists of interviews with 12 focus groups of 3 students in each. The results indicate that the students experienced unwanted interference by the teachers during the school day, and that they felt a lack of democratic involvement in social conflicts, digital usages and other daily forms of decision-making. Further, the interviews indicated that students perceived their teachers as biased when it came to helping students in situations of bullying or other relationship challenges. In investigating digital interactions and competencies among Norwegian students, we identified a visible gap in the notion of Bildung and identity development between the students and the teachers. This finding suggests a need to further discuss the role of students in creating a better school system based on democratic ideals.