Digital Citizenship: A Survey On Teachers' Perception And Teaching Practices

Abstract

Nowadays citizens live in communities made up of complex interweaving of physical reality, technologies, digital media and social networks and are faced with a completely new set of challenges and opportunities that require a critical and cultured citizenship, capable of dealing with differences in a way responsible and humane. Digital citizenship is defined as the acceptable, ethical, and responsible use of technology that emphasizes a more collaborative, creative, and self-empowering use of technology in education as well as in personal use. Teachers are essential in helping students develop digital citizenship skills as they model and teach digital citizenship in their classrooms. Teachers then can empower students to use technology responsibly to learn, create, and participate as digital citizens and develop critical thinking abilities, enhance digital communication skills, and influence their communities by connecting their in-school learning with their out-of-school civic participation. The contribution intends to detect the perception of digital citizenship of teachers of different school levels and the learning methodologies, materials and resources used by them to incorporate digital citizenship education into the curriculum and into their school community. To this end, the Digital Citizenship Scale and a questionnaire was administrated to a non-probabilistic sample of 50 teachers. Specifically, the questionnaire aims to investigate issues related to media literacy, online security and responsibility, disinformation, as well as the use of technologies to promote and protect human rights and foster active participation in democratic processes. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. The results can help to highlight teacher practices and bring out the training needs of in-service teachers so that they would help their students to become digital and ethical citizens in digital learning environments.