The Politics of Digital Citizenship Education

Defining Citizenship

Before digital classroom environments, citizenship education largely took place in the physical classroom. It is helpful to look at how researchers generally define citizenship as it lays the groundwork for defining it in digital settings. Kerr (2000) and Criddle et al. (2004) describe the ways citizenship is incorporated into curriculum as being on a continuum which ranges from being “passive and historical” to “critical and active” (Kerr, 2000, p. 208; Criddel et al., 2004, p. 31). Westheimer and Kahn (2004) take a critical approach to defining citizenship. They explain that while teaching students about how to follow the rules of society is an important component of citizenship, educators should consider “the proper balance between rule following and thinking about the origins and purpose of those rules” (p. 3). Their findings show that educators believe good citizenship means students listening and following authority, being kind to neighbors, and volunteering in the community (Westheimer & Khan, 2004). This led to their critical analysis of how schools define and teach citizenship. They believe a critical approach to defining citizenship is essential because “politics and the interests of varied groups are often deeply embedded in the ways we conceptualize, implement, and study efforts to educate for democracy” (p. 237). To them, citizenship calls for individuals to “solve problems and improve society by questioning and changing established systems and structures” so as to stop “patterns of injustice” (p. 243).

Johnson and Morris (2010) consider this to be a critical pedagogical view of citizenship. In their research, they analyze distinctions between critical pedagogy and critical thinking when defining citizenship. In their opinion, including a critical component when defining citizenship creates a dilemma within curriculum as educators are asked to “on the one hand to ensure an obedient populace and on the other hand to ensure that citizens are creative and critical” (p. 78). They state that this push for criticality is a push for critical pedagogy (Johnson & Morris, 2010). They explain that if critical pedagogy is central to citizenship, then praxis (reflection combined with action) must occur where students move beyond recognizing injustices in society to working to eliminate them (Fischman and McLaren 2005; Freire, 2021; Kincheloe, 2008; Morrow and Torres, 2002). According to Johnson and Morris (2010), this differs from positioning critical thinking as central to citizenship. Critical thinking includes a “concern for social justice and a desire to improve society,” (p. 90) but does not necessarily include taking action to combat social injustices. They identified four distinct elements that are present in a critical pedagogical definition of citizenship: ideology, subjectivity, collectivity, and praxis. To many scholars, citizenship is an active practice of civic engagement that includes critical analysis, dialogue, and debate (Au, 2011; Knoester & Parkinson, 2015; Westheimer & Khan, 2004).

To some researchers, this subjective component of teaching citizenship is essential and the attempt to objectively test citizenship components through the use of national educational standards is problematic. Knoester and Parkison (2015) believe that the adoption by forty-one states of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) shows a push in education for developing workforce skills rather than critically thinking citizens. They claim that schools are “emphasizing test scores as the primary outcome metric” which has “led to a de-emphasis of social studies within the curriculum” (p. 7; Parkison, 2009). Importantly, social studies is the content area where citizenship typically resides. Knoester and Parkinson (2015) state that schools and education “are valued almost always for the purpose of building a stronger economy, not for the purpose of building a more informed and effective voting public” (p. 10).