Digital competence in religious education: a mixed-methods video study of Norwegian classroom practices under the LK20 curriculum

This study examines how teachers and students enacted digital competence in 13 Norwegian religious education classrooms. The dataset comprises 55 lessons video-recorded during the 2023–2024 school year. Using a mixed-methods design, all recordings were first analysed quantitatively employing the EDUCATE observation protocol for digital competence, which features five categories: ‘instruction’, ‘searching and navigation’, ‘production’, ‘communication’ and ‘digital responsibility’. Each category was scored on a 1–4 scale. Analysis of 15-minute lesson segments shows that teachers frequently demonstrated or facilitated varied uses of digital technologies and explicitly addressed digital responsibility. By contrast, students mainly used digital technologies for searching, navigation and production, with limited use for communication and little attention to digital responsibility. Five segments with high category scores were then selected for qualitative analysis and organised into two cases. Case 1, comprising two upper secondary lessons (students aged 18–19), scored highly on the production of digital artefacts but low on digital responsibility, reflecting limited engagement with personal data protection and bias. Case 2, a lower secondary lesson (students aged 15–16) focused on evaluating information from digital sources, achieved the highest digital responsibility score in the sample. Anonymised video excerpts illustrating both cases are available via QR codes.