Having come to power at the end of 2022, the current Swedish government (comprised of the ‘Tidö’ coalition of right wing parties) has been expressing strong doubts about the excessive and ‘hasty’ digitisation of Swedish schools. The national digitisation strategy (initiated in 2017 by the preceding centre-left administration) was heralded at the time as a world-leading effort to digitise schooling. The Tidö parties’ subsequent change of heart is causing consternation among edtech proponents (not to say the Swedish EdTech industry). It has also attracted considerable attention around the world by commentators keen to see other countries follow Sweden’s lead.

One prominent feature of this shift has been the government’s repeated calls to follow ‘what the science says’. More specifically, this has taken the form of canvassing the opinions of Swedish neuro-scientists and cognitive psychologists around the harms of young children’s excessive device use. This fits with a general push toward ‘brain-based’ approaches in Swedish education thinking, and is seen to lend an empirical rigour to otherwise unsubstantiated claims around the educational benefits of digital technologies.

Nevertheless, the question of how digital technologies should be used in schools is not straightforward, and concerns remain that this focus on following the (neuro)science sets a dangerous precedent which is threatening to push Sweden into an equally hasty rejection of all things digital. In a recent paper for Learning, Media and Technology, Ingrid Forsler & Carina Guyard from Södertörn University offer a detached analysis of this current furore – unpacking the origins and implications of the Swedish turn toward a de-digitisation of schools.

Back to basics?

The Swedish government’s questioning of the first national digitisation strategy has been sustained. Minister for Schools – Lotta Edholm – has repeatedly criticised the introduction of digital devices and software into schools as too ‘hasty’ and not based on clear evidence. The government has stressed the need to privilege ‘analogue’ ways of teaching such as handwriting and ‘physical books’. This is accompanied by calls to pay close attention to “important perspectives from, for example, cognition science about how the learning of children and students are affected by digital tools” (Minister for Education – Mats Persson)

Some of this talk could be seen as little more than political point-scoring. For example, the popularist sentiment of wanting to return to ‘traditional’ values has solidified into promises to revitalise practices that most Swedish schools have never actually stopped – not least students reading physical books and learning to write with pen and paper.

That said, these criticism are distinct in evoking ideas from neuroscience and what might be termed ‘brain science’. Thus the current debates in Sweden are infused with talk of brain plasticity, how cognition is stunted by over-exposure to screens, and how young brains are particularly susceptible to being over-whelmed by digital distractions and liable to become ‘addicted’ to devices.

All of this makes good common sense, and fits neatly with popularist notions of cognitive well-being, brain-training and neuro-health that we now see across many aspects of everyday life. Reframing digitisation through a neuro-scientific lens also leads easily into a set of practical actions and interventions that schools and teachers can take – smartphone ‘bans’, screen-time limits and software applications that block inappropriate content. It also backs up the Swedish government’s rationalist demands for producing clear-cut ‘evidence’ and ‘testing scientifically’ as if these are issues that can not only be easily defined, but also objectively measured.

The problems of relying on neuro-explanations

As Forsler & Guyard note, countries such as Sweden have always endured moral panics around young people and new media (such as comic-books, TV and computer games), but these traditionally have tended to be based around moralistic arguments. Yet the current debate around digitisation has an added objectivity (and non-expert impenetrability) of hard science and cognitive rewiring. This is now being framed less as an open debate over what might be considered societally preferable, and more a matter of following the facts.

However, narrowing the digitisation debate to concerns around brains and cognition sidelines a lot of other important issues. For example, by railing against the presence of devices in the classroom, these neuro-led discussions do not acknowledge other uses of digital technologies in education (such as digital administration, digital surveillance), and also distracts attention away from the involvement of IT industry and ‘Big Tech’ corporations. It also loads blame onto individual students for not being able to self-regulate their device use (and places pressure on them to somehow rectify this shortcoming).

Indeed, there are various reasons to remain cautious about reframing school digitisation as a cause for widespread neuro-panic. Above all, it is very difficult to translate neuroscience findings to education. Most experts in cognitive and brain research are extremely careful to stress the limits of their work, and avoid ‘one size fits all’ declarations. However, popular interpretations of neuro-science are much less careful – easily descending into loose talk around ‘neuro-myths’ such as learning styles and left/right brain thinking. The idea of the device-impaired brain is another such over-reach.

Similarly, popular uses of neuroscience to justify the removal of digital devices from classrooms and support a return to traditional methods overlooks the fact that most neuroscience experts are rather open-minded when it comes to digital innovation – for example, pushing the development of brain-training tools and the development of AI systems to support personalized, motivating, and efficient learning. 

Finally, is the need to call out the problematic politics that underpin these seemingly rationalist scientific claims. Forsler & Guyard argue that the Swedish push for neuroeducation has been seized on in some quarters as a way of countering “the traditional sociocultural pedagogy, which is nowadays often accused of being inefficient, ‘non-scientific’, and based on a left-wing ideology rather than evidence-based and more reliable pedagogical knowledge” (p.3). In this sense, the push to ban devices from classrooms on neurological grounds certainly provides a convenient cover for conservative ambitions for a back-to-basics form of schooling based on the rejection of socio-cultural pedagogy and a return to rote learning and transmission of factual knowledge.

Moving beyond the neuro-myths

This all leaves the academic neuroscience community with considerable work to do. At present neuro-scientists find themselves trust into the role of ‘digital experts’, with a number of neuro commentators willing to play up to public concerns and politicians’ prejudices – offering speculative pronouncements on classroom-related issues that their work is perhaps not fully qualified to speak to.

There is certainly a need for academic neuro-scientists to speak up more forcibly about the limits of what their field can (and cannot) say about the digitisation of schools. Academic neuro-education experts should be also willing to call out myth-mongering and mis-use of their work by popular commentators speculating on brain plasticity, device addition, dopamine and the rest. In addition, is the need to engage in carefully planned and appropriately contextualised research on neuroeducation and digital technologies in classrooms.

All this would make for a much more useful and nuanced debate – where appropriate insights from the neuro- and cognitive-sciences can be balanced against insights from pedagogical sciences, learning sciences, critical social sciences and others. If the Swedish government is determined to listen to ‘what the science says’ then it is essential to move beyond a hunt for simplistic ‘X causes Y’ answers relating to cognition. Schooling takes place through the coming-together of thousands of different moving parts – many of which cannot be easily observed, measured and modelled.

As a result, any discussions around what should be done about digitisation of schools need to be seen as inherently value-driven and subjective. Similarly, what ‘evidence’ is chosen to inform these discussions is also needs to be acknowledged as inherently value-driven and subjective. Politicians should not be fooling us into thinking that neuroscience (or any other science) can provide unequivocal answers. Instead Swedish society should be working out what it wants Swedish schools to be like (and what it wants these schools to be for), and then beginning to collectively work out ways forward that might help achieve those ambitions.

REFERENCES

Forsler, I. & Guyard, C. (2024). Screens, teens and their brains: discourses about digital media, learning and cognitive development in popular science neuroeducation, Learning, Media and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2023.2230893