Students’ citizenship competence learning in cloud classroom in China

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Investigating how digital technologies shape understandings of citizenship and civic attitudes

Proposal

In the twenty-first century, studies suggested that students’ citizenship education learning changes. A broadened understanding of citizenship implies a shift from a classical liberal emphasis on voting rights and responsibilities, to communitarian notions of participation and identity (Delanty, 2000). Therefore, there are calls for citizenship education’s focus on adolescents’ competence to adequately fulfil the social tasks. Correspondingly, in recent years, citizenship education globally has paid increasing attention to students’ citizenship competences indicators and the expanding scope of citizenship (e.g., Torney-Purta et al., 2001).
ICT is viewed as providing many meaningful learning opportunities for students’ citizenship competence learning in the digital era. To accommodate young people’s citizenship learning preferences, studies have suggested going beyond textbook knowledge to include information technologies (Benette, 2009) and selecting technology to help students find a specific answer to let children discover the world more broadly. Many studies have focused on strategies for integrating new information technologies into classrooms, such as providing helpful and useful information (e.g., relevant websites and online resources) that can be utilized in everyday teaching practices.
However, while much related research exists on the broader issue of cloud computing in education, more research is needed to understand the relationship between students’ acceptance and use of technologies such as cloud classrooms and their learning of citizenship competence.
In recent years, ICT has also been embraced as a long-term national development strategy by the Chinese government. Studies report that China has emphasized cloud technology in education to obtain a competitive advantage through greater reliability and reduced upfront service cost (Sabi, Uzoka, Langmia, & Njeh, 2016).
This paper presents the findings of an on-going project involving a cloud classroom in citizenship education in senior middle school with 3,200 grade 10 students in four cities, Chengdu, Qingdao, Zhengzhou and Hangzhou, in China, to explore the following three research questions: (1) What are students’ perceptions of cloud classroom use and their citizenship competences learning? (2) What is the relationship between students’ perceptions of cloud classroom and their citizenship competences learning? (3) What factors influence students’ perceptions? A mixed methodology approach was adopted, consisting of a questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observation.
With specific reference to 3,200 grade 10 students in China, this study reported patterns of students’ perceptions of cloud classroom use and citizenship competences. Generally, students had positive perceptions of the use of cloud classrooms and their citizenship competencies. Additionally, significant correlations were found between students’ perceptions of cloud classroom use and of citizenship competences. Finally, students’ SES background impacts their perception of cloud classroom use. This article has also proposed possible explanations for these patterns, including school leaders’ and teachers’ support of the use of cloud classrooms; the cloud classrooms system extension of students’ citizenship competence learning space; and family SES’s influence on students’ citizenship competence learning and cloud classroom use.
This study supplements the extant literature on student competence learning in cloud classrooms by identifying a citizenship competence/individual-context framework to understand citizenship competence learning in cloud classrooms in the Chinese context.
The complexities and dynamics involved in the formation and acquisition of citizenship competences reflect the interplay among three main factors: individual family SES factors; citizenship competence factors, including citizenship competences highlighted and developed based on cloud classroom learning; and contextual factors in the cloud classroom—including the wider social context for cloud classroom use (e.g., people’s experience of and attitude towards computer use, the examination-driven culture, etc.), the real classroom context, and citizenship education cloud classroom learning environments (pre-lesson, in-lesson, and post-lesson). Students have different experiences in and perception of their citizenship competence learning, depending on the interactions of these factors.
Individual SES background factors contribute to students’ perceptions of their citizenship competence. Echoing other studies’ findings on the influence of SES on citizenship education (e.g., Rubin, 2007), high-SES background students in this study were generally more confident about their citizenship competences.
This study found individual factors also interacted with learning contexts. First, individual factors may provide students different interactions with the wider social context of cloud classrooms; specifically, students from higher SES families may have more opportunities to use computers and may have family members who use computers for work rather than for entertainment, which may influence their attitudes toward cloud classroom use. Second, this study also found that individual factors interacted with the real classroom context. Students from higher SES families more often agreed they had received help from their peers in their cloud classroom use.
The citizenship competence/context relationship in students’ citizenship learning in this study was dynamic, rather than static. As pointed out by the literature on sociocultural learning, individuals and contexts change as they interact. The wider social context showed exam-driven expectations that cloud classroom use would improve students’ cognitive knowledge of citizenship education, partly explaining teachers’ initial interest in using cloud classrooms. However, after using the cloud classroom, the interviewed teachers made pedagogical decisions (e.g., providing students opportunities to express themselves, to find the correct answer, to learn from peers, etc., rather than focusing on knowledge transmission alone) based on their judgment of students’ citizenship competence (students’ pre-class and in-lesson exercise performance), which impacted the levels of citizenship competences highlighted in the classroom and that students develop after the study.

References
Bennett, W., Wells, C., and Rank, A. (2009). Young citizens and civic learning: two paradigms of citizenship in the digital age. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 105-120.
Delanty, G. (2000). Citizenship in a Global Age: Society, Culture, Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Sabi, H. M., Uzoka, F.-M. E., Langmia, K., and Njeh, F. N. (2016). Conceptualizing a model for adoption of cloud computing in education. International Journal of Information Management, 36, 183–191.
Torney-Purta, J., Lehman, R., Oswald, H. and Shulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and Education in Twenty-Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen. Amsterdam: IEA.

Author

• Wangbei Ye, East China Normal University