The view of knowledge and the new national curriculum in Norway*

This article highlights how the digital revolution, high technology density, digital confident students and the new educational reform necessitates other theoretical gateways in our contemporary school system. Today we find a consensus among policy-makers, researchers, teacher educators and teachers that competence aims and digital literacy must be given high priority and needs to be explored more deeply in our elementary school as a consequence of the implementation of a new national curriculum. Despite this consensus, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in previous curricula have been marked by weak theoretical foundations, and therefore implementation of ICT has been more strongly anchored rhetorically than in teacher’s theoretical ballast. Consequently, this article focuses on whether we now in the new educational reform, the knowledge promotion, are entering a time of upheaval within this area where the increased status of digital literacy and competence aims in the subjects necessitates new, or complementary theories which can capture some of these digital challenges. The article focuses on the “paradigm debate” within education and specially one theory, situated learning, is presented and analysed in light of other theories, educational policy documents and contemporary societal streams.