Digital Citizenship

     Digital Citizenship is an aspect of education that has gained importance since the introduction of technology to societies and classrooms decades ago. As new tools have permeated the learning space, the  International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has adjusted teaching standards to reflect new possibilities, from an original focus in 2008 on using technology to teach, to a revamp in 2017 focusing on “collaboration, advocacy, digital literacy, media literacy, computational thinking, privacy and student data, student empowerment, data-based decision making, feedback, and teaching colleagues” (Trust, 2017, para. 2). For example, the teaching standard 3 is “Model digital age work and learning. Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society” (ISTE, n.d.).

        Teachers today are asked not only to be content area experts but to be technologically competent enough to lead by example in the area of digital citizenship. A study by Gomez et al. evaluated teacher self-efficacy with technology in a group of 327 Catholic school teachers in California, based on an online confidence scale survey aligned to the ISTE, and found that teachers were only “fairly confident” in using and integrating technology (2021). This level of confidence does not lend itself to representing an innovative professional in a digital society as the ISTE standard calls for. Solutions posited by researchers in the field typically include more professional development and training for teachers in the area of technology (Gomez et al., 2021). This is certainly a step in the right direction, but considerations must be made about demands on teachers’ time, overall priorities in their specialized field, and school-provided incentives for teachers investing in yet another area of expertise.

        Perhaps digital citizenship should be an elective class with its own set of experts and curriculum that targets these important skills. Another idea is to have specialized tech teachers on each campus who work with teachers to incorporate digital citizenship skills into their existing curriculum. Ultimately, it is to each teacher's benefit to gain digital citizenship competencies for their own life and their student's education. Schools must consider the best way to support teachers in gaining confidence in this area, without presenting it as an expectation or “to-do” on top of numerous other essential job responsibilities. 

References:

Gomez, F. C., Trespalacios, J., Hsu, Y. C., & Yang, D. (2021). Exploring Teachers’ Technology Integration Self-Efficacy through the 2017 ISTE Standards. TechTrends, 66(2), 159–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00639-z

ISTE. (n.d.). https://www.iste.org/explore/ISTE-Standards-in-Action/Know-the-ISTE-StandardsT-3:-Model-digital-age-learning

Trust, T. (2017). 2017 ISTE Standards for Educators: From Teaching With Technology to Using Technology to Empower Learners. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2017.1398980