Teacher perceptions of digital life skills in upper secondary school: Digital detox, footprints and responsibility

The introduction of a new curricular reform in 2020 led to life skills becoming a widely discussed topic in Norway. Other commonly debated topics are young people’s technology use and time spent online. Their lives seem intricately dependent on technology and social media, which highlights a need to address societal pressures, including mental health, exclusion and online risks in their education. Given these developments, it has become important to further examine digital life skills to address the juxtaposition between digital technologies and life skills in young people’s lives to capture these challenges and understand how they are addressed in school. This study aims to enrich existing research by examining the concept of digital life skills and contributing to the conceptualisation of this concept through teachers’ perspectives in Norway. We interviewed 13 upper secondary school teachers from general and vocational study programmes to capture their views on the concept of digital life skills in two school subjects. Our findings indicate that the teachers relate to digital life skills and consider them important. The teachers connect digital life skills to three themes we have labelled digital detox, digital footprints and digital responsibility. This study presents pedagogical and didactical implications of teachers’ perceptions and integration of digital life skills into their instructional practices. Furthermore, the findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and school leaders, enhancing their understanding of how upper secondary teachers in English and social science in Norway conceptualise digital life skills.