Professional digital competence (PDC) has become a key policy focus in European teacher education, exemplified by frameworks like DigCompEdu (Redecker, 2017) and Norway's national PDC Framework for Teachers (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2024). Despite ongoing policy support, previous studies highlight issues such as fragmented implementation, a lack of programmatic coherence, and a reliance on self-reported data rather than observed practice (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018; Instefjord & Munthe, 2017; Norhagen et al., 2024). This PhD research explores how PDC is conceptualized, distributed, and implemented in Norwegian primary teacher education (GLU 1–7). The results are directly relevant to programme leaders, quality assurance efforts, and policymakers.

The overall aim is to examine how PDC is understood, governed, and enacted through key structures in teacher education — with particular attention to the relationship between policy intentions, institutional responsibility, and the operational demands placed on students through coursework and assessment.

Article 1 follows a scoping review methodology to map the state of PDC research in Norwegian teacher education. Systems thinking (Meadows, 2008) serves as a sensitising perspective in Article 2, illuminating structural dynamics across policy, institution, and practice. Curriculum theory (Goodlad et al., 1979; van den Akker, 2003), TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), and the Technology Integration Matrix (FCIT, 2011) function as analytical lenses in Article 3 for examining how PDC is operationalised in coursework and assessment.

The study follows an article-based design with three sequential sub-studies: (1) a scoping review of PDC in Norwegian teacher education (Norhagen et al., 2024); (2) a qualitative interview study with programme leaders examining how responsibility for PDC is distributed and governed (Norhagen, under review); and (3) a document analysis of 135 coursework assignments and 23 examination texts from one complete GLU 1–7 cohort, 2020–2025, analysed through TPACK and TIM (Norhagen, manuscript in preparation).

Across all three studies, a consistent pattern emerges: PDC is clearly defined at the curriculum level but is weakly established at the operational level. Article 1 indicates that the research primarily reflects perceptions rather than actual practice (Norhagen et al., 2024). Article 2 shows that responsibility for PDC is broadly spread, with no single actor accountable at the programme level (Norhagen, under review). Article 3 finds that only 27% of coursework assignments and 2 out of 23 examinations include digital components; even when integration occurs, a TPACK×TIM paradox emerges: relatively high-quality task design coexists with low student activity levels. Tasks at the transformation level is completely absent (Norhagen, manuscript in preparation).

These findings imply that PDC in Norwegian teacher education results more from random development than intentional planning, driven by passionate educators rather than a unified programme structure. The project provides a framework to understand how policy goals are often diluted or altered through institutional practice, offering an analytical language to pinpoint where and why this process of translation fails.