A revised curriculum for the Swedish preschool was introduced in July 2025 and the government announced that preschools now are “screen-free” (Government Offices of Sweden, 2025). The requirement to use digital tools and teach digital competence is removed from the curriculum and the importance of an analog environment is emphasized (The Swedish Agency of Education, 2025). The revised curriculum can be understood as a policy aimed at de-digitalizing Swedish preschools and aligns with the cultural trend of “the digital backlash”, in which the role of digital technologies in everyday life is increasingly questioned (Albris et al., 2024). 

The aim of this study is to explore how preschool teachers reshape relationships between themselves, children, and digital technologies – conceptualized here as “socio-digital arrangements” - in response to the curriculum reform. The study draws on 15 individual interviews with preschool teachers working in Sweden. The theory of discretionary reasoning (Molander, 2016) is used to analyze teachers’ decision-making and motivations regarding the reshaping of socio-digital arrangements. 

Three main approaches emerge from the data. In the first approach, teachers are critical of the revised curriculum and continue working as before. They view their socio-digital arrangements as pedagogically justified and argue that children need preparation for life in a digital society. In the second approach, teachers welcome the revised curriculum and have reduced the use of digital technologies. Children’s independent use of iPads has been eliminated, and the use of wall projections considerably reduced. These teachers argue that children need social interaction in physical environments and that digital competences can be acquired later in school. In the third approach, teachers oppose the revised curriculum but feel pressured by the principal to drastically reduce the use of digital technologies. A sense of “digital shame” is experienced when, for instance, projecting a digital book on the wall to include a large group of children in reading.

In the first two approaches, teachers experience a wide discretionary space (Molander, 2016) as they can base their socio-digital arrangements on professional judgment. In contrast, in the third approach, teachers’ discretionary space is experienced as narrow due to leadership style and strict formulations in the revised curriculum. 

This study is relevant for Nordic educational research as it provides novel insights into processes of de-digitalization and how the digital backlash (Albris et al., 2024) is currently manifesting in education. It highlights the crucial role of leadership in times of the digital backlash in preventing tensions between different actors in preschool, and in safeguarding teachers’ space for professional didactic judgment and agency in creating meaningful educational experiences.

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