In schools across Australia, many students sit through what may be defined as digital citizenship lessons – where they learn about the big, bad internet and all the awful things that can happen to you in the present and future if you don’t play by the digital citizenship rules. Most teachers would agree that teaching in the negative, that reminding students of all the things they can’t do, tends to go in one ear and out the other.
After engaging in some really challenging, yet enlightening research readings, my vision and concept of digital literacy has been expanded – to the point of needing to get some of my ideas down to prevent them from running around wildly in my brain!
There are many definitions of digital literacy, which seem to change as often as a new app might appear, due to the nature of how quickly technology is evolving and how slippery a definition can feel (Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2021). Should we define digital literacy as an activity outlined by signs and symbols mediated by the electronic (Thorne, 2013), or is it the mastery of the skills required to operate digitally, or is it the ability to evaluate and make judgements on what we find online? (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011).
The digital literacy skills I have seen being taught in schools has tended to focus on how to be an appropriate and responsible person online, what (Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2021) define as the ‘protectionist’ approach. Even though teaching children to make appropriate and responsible decisions online, to consider their digital footprint, and to act in a way that would befit a positive member of any community is a good thing, it is only halfway toward what students actually need.
This concept is similar to the thought of attempting to distinguish what might be considered ‘literacy’ and ‘digital literacy’ – in order to be deemed competent in digital literacy, wouldn’t you need to be literate in the true sense of the word? Perhaps it is time to end the separation of the two forms – digital dualisms- (Vivienne et al., 2016) and think of all the eggs as being in one basket – that concepts like literacy, responsible online monitoring, and individual and collective creativity, are what it looks like to be a citizen that is informed by what they consume and makes meaning to share with others (Vivienne et al., 2016) – whether that occurs in the online world or the original 2D version. This seems to me an essential step as the lines continue to blur as to what could be considered online life and real life – I put forward that we can’t even properly define and distinguish the two in our post digital world – they are one and the same (which serves a great teaching point – don’t we want our students to act with the same good character and morals whether they are online or not?)
We still have a way to go. As those in power over children, it is often easier to mandate protective rights (which can tend to be negative) rather than positive rights (Green, 2020). However, children and teenagers are already using the technology at their disposal to assert their independence, and create and share their own meaning – whether we allow it or not. It seems to me that we better get on the wagon, and get on quick. If we want the horse to be controlling the speed of the cart, and help to guide the direction it might take, then digital literacies must go hand in hand with teaching on character and moral directives. If we are not clear in our direction on this, digital media becomes the place for power struggles between adults and childre (Livingstone, 1992), not a place where autonomy and agency can be respected and celebrated.
References
Green, L. (2020). Confident, capable and world changing: Teenagers and digital citizenship. Communication Research and Practice, 6(1), 6-19.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2011). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (3rd ed.). Open University Press.
Livingstone, S. (1992). The meaning of domestic technologies: A personal construct analysis of familial gender relations. In R. Silverstone & E. Hirsch (Eds.), Consuming technologies: Media and information in domestic spaces (pp. 113–130). Routledge.
Pangrazio, L., & Sefton-Green, J. (2021). Digital Rights, Digital Citizenship and Digital Literacy: What’s the Difference?. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 10(1), 15-27.
Thorne, S. L. (2013). Digital literacies. In M. Hawkins (Ed.), Framing Languages and Literacies (pp. 192-218). Routledge.
Vivienne, S., McCosker, A., & Johns, A. (2016). Digital citizenship as fluid interface between control, contest and culture. In A. McCosker, S. Vivienne, & A. Johns (Eds.), Negotiating digital citizenship: Control, contest and culture (pp. 1–17). Rowman & Littlefield.