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Digital Citizenship and Professional Digital Competence in a Postdigital Age: Teacher Educators' Views and Potentialities
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of applied educational science.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6930-9239
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of applied educational science.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8409-0557
2021 (English)In: Scuola Democratica (2021). Book of Abstracts of the International Conference of the journal Scuola Democratica. Reinventing Education, Rome, 2-5 June, Associazione “Per Scuola Democratica” / [ed] Scuola Democratica, Rome: Scuola democratica , 2021, p. 343-343Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Educating future citizens is part of teachers’ work for which student teachers need skills and knowledge. Digitalization in society places new demands on teacher education institutions (TEIs) and teacher educators (TEs) because it is changing citizenship and the democratic landscape. Young people’s civic engagement is becoming increasingly more digital while challenges to democracy are augmented, for instance post-truth disinformation campaigns, digital surveillance, and ‘echo chambers’.This paper reports from a postdigital perspective on the early results of a case study of TEs’ conceptualizations of digital citizenship at seven TEIs spread geographically across Sweden. Based on semi-structured interviews with 16 TEs who teach a module on democracy and education mandatory for all student teachers (General Education Studies, first semester), this study examines TEs’ views of digital citizenship and the professional digital competence (PDC) required for TEs to teach for digital citizenship. The results show that TEs generally agreed that the digitalization of society impacts how school is to foster democratic citizens and that this requires specific dimensions of TE and teacher PDC. Digital citizenship tended to be narrowly conceptualized as pertaining to source criticism while other aspects such as skills and knowledge for democratic participation, critical engagement, and online security were expressed less often. Although many TEs agreed that it is important to address digitalization in relation to the democratic assignment, they were uncertain in regard to if, how, and when TEIs prepare student teachers accordingly. When asked about digitalization as part of student teachers’ mandatory module on democracy and education, this was addressed coincidentally, if at all. TEs also viewed lack of time as a problem, citing subject matter, time allotted, and no clear demands on teacher PDC specifically relating to citizenship or the democratic assignment among the National Teacher Program Goals. Thus, although TEs generally believe they have an important role in preparing student teachers for the democratic assignment in in a digitalized school, it is unclear what dimensions of TE and teacher PDC this requires, and different emphases may impact TEI equivalence and subsequently pupils’ citizenship formation. Therefore, TEIs need to ensure that TEs have the PDC needed to include questions of digital citizenship in their teaching. The study also suggests that TEs need to be involved in continuous professional development (CPD) in PDC and digital citizenship in relation to questions concerning for instance course content, teaching, and program structure.These results echo another case study by Lindfors, Pettersson & Olofsson (2021) presented in this paper, which focuses on how TEs view conditions to ensure that student teachers graduate with the PDC needed to work in a digitalized school. This study shows that TEs need CPD in PDC for the dual didactic task of teaching to teach, including the ability to help student teachers position the teaching profession in relation to digitalization in postdigital society. In this regard, TEI leadership and policy support are important, which mirrors the importance of TE CPD in PDC and review of course content and program structure identified by the first study.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Rome: Scuola democratica , 2021. p. 343-343
Keywords [en]
teacher education, digital citizenship, digital competence, postdigital, democracy
National Category
Social Sciences
Research subject
educational work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-183738ISBN: 978-88-944888-4-5 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-183738DiVA, id: diva2:1558644
Conference
2nd International conference of the journal "Scuola Democratica"; Reinventing education", Rome, Italy, June 2-5, 2021
Available from: 2021-05-31 Created: 2021-05-31 Last updated: 2021-05-31Bibliographically approved

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Örtegren, AlexOlofsson, Anders D.

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CiteExportLink to record
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