Highlighted Session: Citizenship education and teaching digital competencies for a polarized time

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

In April 2009, youth activists in Moldova used Twitter to mobilize their peers to protest election fraud and anti-democratic processes by their government. Their peaceful protests garnered international attention with media calling it a “Twitter Revolution.” The activists were successful; the government called for new elections and a pro-democracy party won control. A decade and a half later in August 2024 young people took to the streets in England and Northern Ireland to protest immigration, but these were not peaceful protests. Misinformation about a recent stabbing of three children by a British born citizen, who was mis-identified as an asylum seeker, was spread on X (formerly Twitter) and it sparked several days of violent riots. Rioters destroyed immigrant-owned businesses, vandalized mosques, and attacked hotels that housed asylum seekers. Two 12-year-old boys and a 13-year-old girl were among the over 300 people arrested.

These are just two of many examples from across the globe and across time of how social media has been used as a tool for both positive and destructive civic engagement. As citizenship education researchers and practitioners, we are increasingly concerned with the latter. We have witnessed increased social divisions in our home countries and around the world while also witnessing the marginalization of school subjects that would foster civic engagement. Drawing from case studies of five countries, we argue there is an urgent need for teaching digital competencies* and media literacy** in our increasingly polarized world. Positive civic engagement requires young citizens to be able to discern, deliberate, and think critically about news sources and digital information, and react to these sources in responsible and nonviolent ways. Citizenship education—both in formal and nonformal spaces—can encompass this teaching and learning.

Citizenship education is an essential component of any democratic society because citizens do not learn to engage in democratic institutions “automatically” (e.g., Hahn 1998; Parker 2003; Levinson and Stevick 2007). Young people have the opportunity to learn essential skills through citizenship education, such as deliberation (Hess and McAvoy 2015), critical reflection and discussion (Banks 2017), understanding of controversial issues (McCully 2006; Pace 2021), and personal autonomy and decision making (Gutmann 1999). In postconflict and transitional societies, citizenship education also has the potential to foster tolerance, reconciliation, and social cohesion (e.g., Author 2023; Davies 2012; Bellino 2016; Russell 2018). In considering how to teach young people about media literacy and digital competencies and how to use these tools in countering polarization, citizenship education is an ideal forum.

There is ample research on digital competencies and standards for educators, such as the Digital Competence for Educators (European Commission, n.d.), the International Telecommunications Union’s Digital Skills toolkit (ITU 2018) and the International Society for Technology in Education Standards (ISTE 2024). However, there has been less focus on supporting the intersection of digital competencies, citizenship education, and civic engagement. The proposed CIES panel will begin a conversation in this rich space.

The CIES 2025 Conference Call for Proposals states: “Equally, discussions about fake news, media literacy and digital competencies have led to a need for envisioning what education is and can be. The conference theme . . . asks us to envision what we are doing and why we do things the way we do?” This panel answers this call by featuring two academic papers and two presentations about ongoing media literacy projects. Together, the panellists will engage in a conversation about what we are doing to promote media literacy and digital competencies, why are we are doing it, what this looks like across contexts, and what can we learn from each other. Some of the larger questions that we wish to explore and open up for discussion are: What are the digital skills that teachers should be learning and how do teachers adapt to changing needs/contexts? How are citizenship teachers and schools addressing digital competencies across contexts and curricula? And how might the background of pre-service teachers affect their preparation for teaching digital competencies or countering online extremism, misinformation? This panel will appeal to those CIES members interested in citizenship education as well as a larger audience who is concerned with digital competencies, media literacy, and using these tools to counter polarization.

* We draw from UNESCO to define digital competencies as “involve[ing] the confident, critical and responsible use of, and engagement with, digital technologies for learning, at work, and for participation in society” (https://unevoc.unesco.org/home/TVETipedia+Glossary)
**By media literacy, we refer to the set of skills needed to critically analyze and decode digital information, including but not limited to news stories, videos, symbols.

Banks, James A. 2017. “Failed Citizenship and Transformative Civic Education.” Educational Researcher 46 (7): 366–77.
Bellino, Michelle J. 2016. “So That We Do Not Fall Again: History Education and Citizenship in ‘Postwar’ Guatemala.” Comparative Education Review 60 (1):58–79.
Davies, Lynn. 2012. “Teaching about Conflict through Citizenship Education.” In Citizenship, Education and Social Conflict, 114–33.New York: Routledge.
European Commission. (n.d). Digital competence framework for educators (DigCompEdu). https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/digcompedu_en
Gutmann, Amy. 1999. Democratic Education. Princeton University Press.
Hahn, Carole. 1998. Becoming Political: Comparative Perspectives on Citizenship Education. Suny Press.
Hess, Diana E., and Paula McAvoy. The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education. Critical Social Thought. New York: Routledge, 2015.
International Telecommunications Union (ITU). (2018). Digital Skills toolkit. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Digital-Inclusion/Documents/ITU%20Digital%20Skills%20Toolkit.pdf
ISTE Standards (2024), ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), iste.org
Levinson, Bradley A., and Doyle Stevick, eds. 2007. Reimagining Civic Education: How Diverse Societies Form Democratic Citizens. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
McCully, Alan. 2006. “Practitioner Perceptions of Their Role in Facilitating the Handling of Controversial Issues in Contested Societies: A Northern Irish Experience.” Educational Review 58 (1): 51–65.
Pace, Judith L. 2021. Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Parker, Walter. 2003. Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life. Multicultural Education Series. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Russell, S. Garnett. 2018. “Global Discourses and Local Practices: Teaching Citizenship and Human Rights in Postgenocide Rwanda.” Comparative Education Review 62 (3): 385–408.

Sub Unit

• Citizenship and Democratic Education SIG

Chair

• Elizabeth Anderson Worden, American University

Individual Presentations

• Pre-services teachers’ perceptions around misinformation and their role in combatting polarisation - Una O'Connor, Ulster University; Clare McAuley, Ulster University

• Fostering critical digital citizenship skills: navigating misinformation and media bias - Alexandra Levy, World Learning

• From digital literacy to digital citizenship: teachers in the Goldilocks zone - Sammy Taggart, Ulster University

• Teaching media literacy in early grades: lessons from the DUCC project - Elizabeth Anderson Worden, American University

Discussant

• Clare McAuley, Ulster University