Student and teacher perspectives of online benefits and challenges: implications for community-informed digital citizenship

• In Event: Technology in the lives of older children and adolescents: Digital citizenship, empathy, and attitudes

Abstract

Youth’s ability to use digital technologies in positive, responsible, and ethical ways is referred to as ‘digital citizenship,’ and it becomes more urgent with recent investments in K-12 technology, the rise of mobile technologies among children, and the significant time spent with digital media in childhood and adolescence. Schools are well-positioned to facilitate digital citizenship because of their role in the community, but there is no established curriculum for digital citizenship in the US (Walters et al., 2019). Research finds digital citizenship programming may not reflect youths’ experiences (Day et al., 2020), and curricula developed by educators can conflict with student goals for technology use. Thus, it is worthwhile to understand the needs of multiple stakeholders in the same school community.

The present study explores youth and educator perspectives of online life as part of an ongoing research-practice partnership between a private school serving K-12 and public university. Practitioners and researchers wanted to develop a community-based digital citizenship program and began by collecting survey data to describe (1) What benefits and challenges do youth identify in online spaces? And (2) To what degree do youth’s expressed areas of need align with teachers’ concerns about online spaces?

Participants included students in grades 3-12 (N=491) and their teachers (N=35). A team of educators, administrators and researchers collaborated to create student and teacher surveys and participants were asked close-ended questions about demographics, media use, phone ownership, perceptions of online benefits and challenges, online school climate, and open-ended questions about their concerns. Researchers used quantitative data to describe trends and analyzed open ended responses with inductive and thematic coding.

The majority of students reported online benefits in these main areas: learning, connection, entertainment, creation, and help-seeking. Challenges varied based on grade level. Among open ended student responses, major themes related to content (e.g. exposure to graphic content), contact (e.g. requests from strangers), comparing self to others, online privacy, and feelings of control (e.g. regulating tech use, loss of control over images) emerged. Some of teachers’ most frequent concerns were also priorities for students, while others were not as widely reported by students. Teachers’ open ended responses centered on concerns about technology getting in the way of academic and developmental needs of students (e.g. self-regulation, sleep, social development, physical activity). Teachers’ responses also suggested tensions around who is responsible for mentoring children into digital life.

Findings highlight the wide-ranging issues youth encounter in digital spaces as well as the need for more youth input in digital citizenship programming. Educators shared many student concerns but were especially interested in the ways technology can undermine development. Given recent policy interest in the impact of technology on child development and the role of technology in learning, it is important to understand how students and teachers are thinking about online life and the extent they agree on what conversations will be valuable and appropriate.

Authors

• Allison Starks, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie M Reich, University of California - Irvine

• Adrian Rodriguez

• Elizabeth Stone

• Rachel Goforth

• Alan Krause