Citizenship - Rationale


In this article about the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and citizenship education the emphasis is on those aspects of ICT that generate questions and debates about effective citizenship (ICT as practice) or those aspects of ICT that show how ICT can support citizenship education (ICT as a Key Skill).

It is written to be relevant to any phase of initial teacher education (ITE) because first and foremost it is a crucial professional requirement that all trainee teachers acquire an understanding of the social, ethical and political significance of ICT. Second but equally important is the fact that pupils in school today have potentially high expectations about the effective and interesting use of ICT in their learning. Trainee teachers, whether Foundation Phase, Primary, Secondary or subject specialists, are in the vanguard of the effort to meet these aspirations.

Thus, throughout this article the generic term 'trainee teacher' or 'trainee' refers to any phase of training. It is of course up to the tutor and the trainees to consider the appropriateness of suggested classroom activities for a particular age range, but considered reflexively the issues are common to all trainees.

Occasional paragraphs in italics are intended to be broad suggestions for ICT tutors on which they might build discussion or practical work with their trainees:

At the beginning of their course many trainees will not have considered the social, ethical and political issues relating to ICT use in everyday life. They may not have reflected on these issues in relation to their own ICT capability or the pedagogy of ICT. How important is ICT to a good education in the 21st Century?

Citizenship education presents the ICT tutor and trainee with a very large range of interesting topics and experiments that can greatly enrich their curriculum, whether for subject specialists or the more generalist primary teacher.

In so doing, new ICT teachers will become more extended. They need to be aware that ICT is much more than merely manipulating software. They need to understand and to take a position on the way in which ICT is intimately woven into many significant moral and political questions that are a part of everyday life. ICT is social practice much more than it is a technical function.

Thus, throughout this resources tutors and trainees should consider:

1. How citizenship education arises in teaching ICT as a subject.
2. How ICT can support the teaching and learning of citizenship.

As a coursework assignment ask your trainees to track the newspapers, television news, online newsfeeds, and related media for stories that link ICT to everyday social controversy. Look for topics such as plagiarism, identity theft, data mismanagement, public expenditure on IT systems, governmental interference in or facilitation of information systems, the arguments about the positive or negative effects of computer games and their value for learning, changes in language habits, the impact of ICT on everyday economic activity such as shopping or on copyright issues in the arts. (This might be handled as a group wiki or a personal blog).

All sources and resources referred to are listed in the Resources section at the end of this article, plus additional sources not referred to directly.

For a significant general resource relevant to teacher education see the TDA sponsored website CitizED: Citizenship Education and Teacher Education.


A composite document of this resource is available and may be downloaded using the link below.
author: David Longman


download Acrobat document: "CitizenshipandICT.pdf" (553K)

Background


Citizenship has been a statutory foundation subject of the National Curriculum in England at Key Stages 3-4 since September 2002. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland it is not a separate subject but remains embedded within the PSHE curriculum.

The context for the emergence of citizenship education as a general educational concern is the same for all. At root is a long term trend that indicates a declining engagement between people and the democratic political system by which we live. This includes such elements as a long term decline in participation rates in civil and voluntary organisations as well as voting rates in general and local elections, sometimes referred to as the democratic deficit.

As a response to these concerns, on its election in 1997, the new Labour government set up the Advisory Group on Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in School. The Advisory Group was chaired by Sir Bernard Crick and its report, Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (1998) is thus known as the Crick Report.

Labour's own electoral success itself provided evidence for the decline in political engagement. Not only was its victory based on a very low turnout but the demographic group that voted least was the newly enfranchised 18- to 25-year-olds (Independent, 'Citizenship must begin to replace ethos in the classroom' 27/9/2002).

In England the Crick Report led to the formation of the new National Curriculum foundation subject, citizenship, statutory at Key Stages 3 and 4 and advisory at Key Stages 1 and 2. The details of the National Curriculum requirements in England, revised in 2008, can be viewed at the National Curriculum website. For Key Stage 3 and 4 the curriculum is organised around key concepts and key processes (Key Stages 1 and 2 remain as they were for the 1999 version of the curriculum). The curriculum has three main areas of focus:
In Wales, for example, citizenship is embedded in Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship and there is a strong focus on
values education:
Although there is no explicit Welsh approach to the promotion of social responsibility, there are a large number of education initiatives that have the development of values at their heart. The expectation is that schools should play an important role in promoting these values in young people through the range and quality of the experiences they provide and by actively engaging young people through consultation in the education they receive.
(Estyn 2007).
While there are differences between the countries of the UK, a key issue for ICT tutors is that although you may be working with trainees who are intending to become specialist ICT teachers, as well as generalist primary teachers, there are a variety of contexts in which citizenship education will appear and where ICT expertise will be applied:
Where and how will citizenship education happen?
Everywhere. It's up to schools to plan the delivery of citizenship. It can happen: (TeacherNet:Citizenship)


author: David Longman

Aspects of Citizenship Education


In a very useful literature review, Selwyn (2004) distinguishes several important aspects of citizenship education. These distinctions are helpful to the ICT tutor in identifying the ways in which ICT can contribute to the subject area. Selwyn (2007) updates this review. Both reviews should be regarded as key texts for ICT trainees.

This article makes use of Selwyn's classification which distinguishes between passive and active approaches to citizenship education referring to the level of participation and activity not only by students and pupils but also by the school and the teacher.

The Crick report itself was emphatic that it is not sufficient to produce good citizens but also active citizens, hence, for example, the emphasis on community involvement that runs throughout curriculum formulations of citizenship education.

The diagram illustrates Selwyn's basic scheme:

------------------ Passive --------------------------------Active -----------------
.......Education...........................Education......................Education
...about citizenship............through citizenship..........for citizenship
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many trainees will not have given any or much consideration to how, as teachers, their own level of participation and engagement may be expressed through their teaching.

The key process skills that make up ICT capability are a significant contribution that ICT brings to citizenship education. All the UK National Curriculums promote similar common skills and processes in ICT, along with their application and development in a range of contexts and levels:
Thus, ICT is at the heart of any learning activity in citizenship education (and potentially for all subjects) all the way from the simple gathering of information (Education about citizenship) to the researching, recombining, and communication of information (Education for citizenship).

Pupils, students, trainees, and teachers need to be capable of using information dynamically and in a variety of contexts. It is through the meaningful and critical that active, participatory citizenship education can develop.

While there is a little more diversity in the design and content of citizenship education curriculums across the United Kingdom, there are common process skills, which in their turn are very similar to those key skills in ICT (perhaps a little more explicit in the English and Welsh versions):

ICT teachers are in a special position because they are well placed to teach learners how to undertake effective information research, which is both a key process skill in ICT and in citizenship education.

Thus ICT teachers have to teach it well.

Like all schemes this one should be taken critically. Trainees should skim and review the various approaches to ICT and citizenship in the curriculums of the United Kingdom. Map ICT process skills onto citizenship process skills. What features do they all share in common (e.g. processes and skills) and in what ways do they differ? Trainees should also be encouraged to discuss such issues as: To what extent are the key ICT process skills of finding, retrieving and communicating information essential for effective citizenship education? To what extent, for example, might students' employability be enhanced if they can carry out fast, efficient Google searches?



author: David Longman

ICT and eCitizenship


Perhaps most obviously, ICT itself can be a topic of study within citizenship education as well as within ICT curricula. ICT is widely perceived to have had a dramatic and far reaching impact on global society. Life as a citizen in the contemporary world may be increasingly difficult without the use of ICT in some form, hence the notion of e-citizenship. The lack of access to and availability of ICT in many parts of society, locally and globally, may already have generated a digital divide.

Some key aspects of dealing with ICT as a topic of study would include: Throughout this article a familiarity with and awareness of the huge range of ICT tools, applications and environments is assumed. Any teacher or trainee, whether subject specialist or not, should keep abreast of the evolving nature of ICT. Even today many teachers will assume that ICT begins and ends with office-style applications of one form or another (wordprocessing, spreadsheets, graphics and paint etc).

But the power and importance of what is known as Web 2.0 must be fully exploited and understood. Social networks such as Bebo and Facebook, virtual worlds such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel, online writing and publishing (both individual and collaborative) through blogs, wikis, YouTube, or shared tools such as Google Docs all drive the use of ICT towards citizenship issues.

And mobile technologies must not be overlooked. The mobile phone is today the single most used tool for communication by young people and likely to become a major driver for social and economic development across the globe in less affluent nations.

Trainee teachers must appreciate and understand the significance of these technologies for learning and for their pupils' future role as employees, artists, voters, policy makers etc. It is essential that all courses of initial teacher training ensure that trainees gain experience in using these technologies and that they develop a critical understanding of their value.

author: David Longman

ICT and Education About Citizenship


Education about citizenship broadly aims to impart information and knowledge about key elements of the citizenship education curriculum and to raise awareness through familiarisation with recognisable skills, ideas, and attitudes. It is about critical thinking and enquiry.

While important, in Selwyn's scheme these aims could be achieved with relatively low levels of participation by pupils, and thus a more passive style of learning.

Trainees should consider the different ways in which citizenship education can be taught. How do different learning and teaching contexts affect the degree of learner participation?

ICT teachers can contribute some key process skills that can help facilitate even the most basic of these aims. They may be summarised as:

Finding, retrieving and communicating information


However, there is ample evidence to suggest that these process skills are not being acquired even by the so-called Google Generation. So these skills cannot be taken for granted by teachers. Young learners may appear to be adept
digital natives but this is usually in a highly non-critical manner.

Nor can teachers assume that they are fluent in these process skills themselves. Research evidence also indicates that mature, professional users of web-based information sources lack proficiency too.

Trainee teachers may not have given much consideration to their own skill and effectiveness when finding, processing and using information. Trainees should, therefore, be given opportunities to reflect on this. Examples might include academic activities such as library and journal searches, using search engines, or collecting and using a bibliographic database, but also such everyday activities as shopping for items on Amazon, using email to correspond with others, some sort of social networking, maintaining bookmark lists etc.

To help trainees develop a more informed awareness of the current range and level of information gathering skills, reference should be made to the Google Generation Project carried out at UCL CIBER and subsequently published as Digital Consumers

While citizenship education should begin in the early years, the opportunities for finding, retrieving and communicating information are less direct and need to be carefully constructed for young learners. However, young learners do need to develop their aptitude with basic navigational skills as early as possible. Learning and Teaching Scotland has some useful starting points for citizenship education in the early years.

As children mature during KS2 the process skills of searching, retrieving and using information can be progressively elaborated. The TDA sponsored website CitizED is an important starting point for trainee teachers to begin to think about what sort of information sources may be useful and relevant both in their role as ICT subject teachers (such sources can form the basis for effective ICT teaching) and also more widely in helping to inform or work with citizenship education colleagues.

author: David Longman

ICT and Education Through Citizenship


Complementary to the previous section on the acquisition of knowledge and understanding about citizenship is the way in which ICT can promote a more active learning by doing in citizenship education, i.e. participation in activities within school, in the local community or beyond. Through greater participation, knowledge and understanding are contextualised and pupils will learn that there are often no straightforward answers to many difficult issues. Advocacy and representation are therefore key capabilities in citizenship.

In Education About Citizenship the use of ICT should be, from the outset, a key tool in searching for, retrieving, and organising information and should include and promote a critical attitude towards information sources in order to evaluate it.

In Education Through Citizenship the role of ICT in supporting and enabling debate and discussion becomes crucial. The ICT teacher can contribute significantly to citizenship education by ensuring that pupils can, to a high order,

Express, exchange, evaluate and exhibit information (Northern Ireland)


Debate and discussion is a central method in citizenship education although it can be challenging to implement it fully and effectively in classroom settings. ICT can add considerable value to these key processes by helping pupils to focus on what makes communication effective across a number of dimensions:

ICT as a resource creator: Communication, discussion and debate rely on the capacity to represent and express ideas and information in a variety of styles and media.

Trainees should analyse the variety of different ways that ICT can engage pupils in creating resources and emphasising, naturally, the potential of multimedia to support a wide variety of communication styles and contexts. Citizenship education provides a range of opportunities for authentic learning to take place both within school and the local community. Trainees should be able to identify some of these, particularly in relation to their placement schools.

ICT as a medium of communication: ICT is, as its name implies, a medium of communication. Trainees should learn to make effective and creative use of the extensive range of channels it affords both for general professional purposes and in the content of their teaching.

Trainees should be able to enumerate and describe the wide a range of ICT communication channels that are available and they should become as adept as possible at using at least some of them. They should be able to explain the difference between one-one, one-many, and many-many channels, synchronous and asynchronous modes, and understand the relative merits of different contexts in which text, voice and image can be combined to communicate with peers or a wider audience (e.g. social networking versus email). They should also understand and develop strategies for managing the safe use of such tools and should know how to educate pupils in the safe use of ICT for communicating with others. In this last respect trainees should appreciate that they, too, are responsible for teaching citizenship education directly because the safe and responsible use of ICT is a key element of a just society. Some key sources that address these aspects and that trainees should read are Web 2.0 technologies for learning at KS3 and KS4 (Becta) and Safer Children in a Digital World (the Byron Review).

ICT as a source of role play and simulation: Selwyn (2007) also includes here the use of ICT in providing activities that simulate relevant citizenship processes or provide opportunities for role play. Sim*Sweatshop affords a simple example and the UN/IDSR simulation Stop Disasters! a more elaborate one.

Trainees should appreciate that a variety of ICT-based opportunities exist that rely on the use of the computer as a tool for exploring 'as-if' or 'what-if' scenarios. The Thinking Together Project is a good example of resources developed for primary pupils where scenarios are combined with a structured approach to teaching pupils about how to hold a discussion. ICT is incorporated in this project, e.g. see Kate's Choice.

author: David Longman

ICT and Education for Citizenship


Trainees will begin to acquire an important and useful body of aims and objectives to cover any phase of ICT teaching when they consider the use of ICT for critical thinking and enquiry in learning and teaching about citizenship, and the use of ICT to understand and apply advocacy and representation in learning through citizenship .

The importance of the practice of citizenship is, thus, explicit through all the National Curricula for citizenship in the UK.

By this point, trainees should have considered to what degree ICT is made more socially purposeful by using it to support at least some of the aims of citizenship education. In particular, trainees should recognise how many practical classroom activities in citizenship arise from the use of a variety of ICT tools and resources, and that these classroom opportunities are possible across all phases of education. The effect of prevailing institutional policies (e.g. see Becta's E-safety materials) on the effective use of ICT should also be considered. To what extent do schools' organisational and operational policies for ICT use hinder or promote the use of networked communications beyond and within the school?

Subject specialist ICT trainees intending to teach at Key Stage 4 and beyond should review examples of qualification specifications that they might typically encounter as teachers. To what extent do ICT qualifications promote citizenship values, or is there a predominantly commercial and technical orientation? To what extent could topics and processes in citizenship education enhance ICT programmes of study for pupils?

According to Selwyn, there is scope for some very interesting and innovative work to be done in encouraging the use of ICT in pursuit of an even more participative approach to citizenship education. In the right kind of school context and with the right kind of approach to teaching, ICT is a fantastic resource, medium and tool through which pupils can learn to take informed and responsible action (Citizenship Key Stage 4, Section 2.3, England).

Perhaps one of the more relevant and immediate contexts within which this strand of citizenship education can be developed is the school itself. After all, the school and classroom are key sites of learning about power, authority, control and ideas about fairness and justice. To be fit for the 21st century the school and the school curriculum must address such citizenship issues as personalisation of learning, sustainable development, diversity and inclusion, among others.

Here the role of ICT in promoting, enabling and facilitating student voice is a relatively untapped aspect of ICT in citizenship education. Organisations such as the English Secondary Students' Association or the School Councils UK both rely heavily on the assumption that students in schools will have access to ICT for engaging in and promoting informed and responsible action within education itself. In Wales the Extending Entitlement policy sets out 10 basic entitlements and, through the School Councils Wales initiative, actively promotes the participation of pupils in representing the views of learners about their education and schooling.

Trainees should consider how online forums, online questionnaire, and even such recent tools as Twitter, might be more effectively deployed in the context of pupils' participation in representation (and perhaps limited decision making) within school. Though completed and already a little dated, a valuable research oriented approach to the idea of student voice in learning and teaching can be reviewed at the ESRC Network Project. Trainees engaged on higher level work (e.g. M Level projects in PGCE programmes) could develop an ICT-based research project around an investigation into student voice.

author: David Longman

Resources


Advisory Group on Citizenship (Crick Report). (1998). Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. [PDF]. http://www.qca.org.uk/libraryAssets/media/6123_crick_report_1998.pdf (Accessed: May 2009).
[Report has a section about the use of ICT.]

Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT). (2009). Home Page. [WWW] http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[ACT champions the teaching of citizenship to all young people and offers direct support to classroom practitioners. Useful Case Studies here.]

Becta. (2009). E-safety introduction. [WWW] http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=is (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[Some key materials on this important aspect of good citizenship and ICT.]

citizED. (2009). Citizenship and Teacher Education. [WWW] http://www.citized.info/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[One of the TDA's ITT professional resource networks (IPRN). A key starting point for teacher trainers.]

Citizenship Foundation. (2009). Home Page. [WWW] http://www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[An independent charity: aims to empower individuals in the wider community through education about the law, democracy and society.]

Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). (2009). Global Gateway. [WWW] http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[Key site funded by DCSF/British Council with contributions from NI, Wales and Scotland.]

Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). (2008). Safer Children in a Digital World (Byron Review). [WWW] http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[Published in March 2008, Dr Tanya Byron sets out a number of recommendations to improve children's safety when they use the internet or play video games.]

Dept of Education Northern Ireland (DENI). (2009). Northern Ireland Curriculum. [WWW] http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

Childnet International. (2009). Digizen Home Page. [WWW] http://www.digizen.org/ (Accessed: 17/05/2009). Digizen is part of Childnet International . It aims to help children, young people and adults to recognise, prevent and respond effectively to challenges in the safe use of the Internet.

ESD-Wales. (2009). Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (Wales). [WWW] http://www.esd-wales.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[A key Welsh resource.]

Futurelab. (2007). Futurelab Literature Reviews: Citizenship, technology and learning. [WWW] http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications-reports-articles/literature-reviews/Literatur
e-Review383 (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[Links to the two reviews by Neil Selwyn: Citizenship, technology and learning. These are key documents for trainee teachers.]

Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). (2009). Curriculum Guidance Scotland. [WWW] http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (Eire). (2009). National Curriculum (Eire). [WWW] http://www.ncca.ie/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

National Foundation for Educational Research (NfER). (2009). Citizenship and human rights education. [WWW] http://www.nfer.ac.uk/research-areas/citizenship/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
[Current research about citizenship education.]

OfSTED. (2005). Citizenship in secondary schools: evidence from Ofsted inspections (2003/04). [WWW] http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Education/Curriculu
m/Citizenship/Citizenship-in-secondary-schools-evidence-from-Ofsted-inspections-2003-04/(language)/eng-GB (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). (2009). National Curriculum(England). [WWW] http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). (2008). Citizenship: Information, resources and support for teachers. [WWW] http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_4791.aspx (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
Citizenship resources for all phases from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

School Councils UK. (2009). Home Page. [WWW] http://www.schoolcouncils.org/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).
An independent charity providing guidance about how to set up and develop school councils.

Teacher Training Resource Bank (TTRB). (2009). Citizenship Resources. [WWW] http://www.ttrb.ac.uk/browse2.aspx?anchorId=11865 (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

TeacherNet. (2008). Citizenship. [WWW] http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/subjects/citizenship/?sectionID=1&hierachy=1&ar
ticleID=145 (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

University of Southampton, School of Social Sciences. (2008). Teaching Citizenship in Higher Education. [WWW] http://www.soton.ac.uk/citizened/ (Accessed: 08/05/2009).

Welsh Assembly Government. (2009). National Curriculum for Wales. [WWW] http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/curriculumassessment/arevisedcurriculumforwales/na
tionalcurriculum/?lang=en (Accessed: 08/05/2009).


For additional resources, Download Word document: Citizenship Supplementary Resources.doc (112K)


author: David Longman