Reconceptualizing Digital Citizenship Curricula: Designing a Critical and Justice-Oriented Digital Citizenship Course
Abstract: Current conceptions of digital citizenship conflate character with citizenship, which re-inscribes historical exclusions and perpetuates normative values of citizenship. While scholars have challenged the prevailing definitions of digital citizenship and argue for integrating a more critical and justice-oriented approach to digital citizenship, we have seen little research on the ways that teacher education and masters programs might teach these more inclusive and activist aims of digital citizenship. In this paper, we argue for a change in the ways that digital citizenship standards are taught to teachers. We suggest ways to develop new models of digital citizenship in teachers, and subsequently, in their students. This paper, part of a larger study, examines the work within our program to rewrite our digital citizenship learning standards; to redesign our coursework around the standards; and to study the ways in which our candidates and their students learn and practice digital citizenship in their classrooms and lives.
Presider: Erik Braun, Northwestern State University of Louisiana