A Delphi Study on Essential Elements for a K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Aim/Purpose: The principal aim of this study was to reveal digital citizenship levels of pre-service teachers enrolled in 1st and 2nd year in the education faculty at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University in Muğla, Turkey. Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of digital citizenship and their patterns of knowledge of digital citizenship were explored. Background: This study examines the concepts of digital citizenship, including digital communication, digital rights / responsibilities, critical thinking, digital participation, digital security, digital skills, digital ethics, and digital commerce, of pre-service teachers and their interaction with instructional technology. This research study will inform policies and strategies to enhance teacher trainings and education in Turkey. Methodology: A mixed methodology of data sources including a survey and open-ended questions were collected to explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions of digital citizenship. The Digital Citizenship Scale was used as the quantitative data collection instrument. Various statistical techniques and tests such as ANOVA, t-Test, and Tukey HSD were used in the analysis of the data. Contribution: This study contributes to existing literature knowledge by demonstrating the patterns of digital citizenship that influence Turkish pre-service teachers’ professional development and deepening the discussion of change in policies and strategies in education programs in Turkey. Findings: Results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference of digital citizenship scores of male and female pre-service teachers with male participants scoring higher than female participants. However, participants’ mean scores did not significantly differentiate by their departments. Similarly, it was observed that participants’ mean scores did not significantly differentiate by the high school types. As far as parent educational background was concerned, the mean scores of the participants did not indicate a significant difference by the education level of the mother, but the scores differed significantly by the father’s education level. Similar responses emerged in the open-ended questions. Participants expressed that they felt competent in digital communication and digital participation and their parents are partly influential in the improvement of these skills. In addition, the majority of the participants stated that the major they enrolled did not have any contribution to their digital skills so far. Recommendations for Practitioners: Recommendations for practitioners to include in their teacher education programs training pre-service teachers to become digital citizens. Recommendation for Researchers: Recommendations for researchers to include identifying practical activities that enhance pre-service teachers’ digital citizenship skills. Impact on Society: The findings and results of this study will help display a universal digital citizenship model for pre-service and veteran teachers in Turkey as well as to strengthen their interaction with instructional and information technologies through policy and strategy changes in educational settings. Future Research: Further studies should be undertaken, especially in developing countries. Future research can further explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions of digital citizenship such as digital rights, responsibilities, and ethics as well as evaluating the opinions of school administrators, students, and parents regarding their perceptions of digital citizenship in educational settings.

Cooperative Mentorship: Negotiating Social Media Use within the Family

The purpose of this study was to investigate some effects on Turkish pre-service teachers’ digital citizenship behaviours. With the rapid spread of technology, individuals have become a part of the digital world and faced the accompanying need to develop their digital citizenship skills. It has gained importance to reveal the factors affecting the digital citizenship skills of pre-service teachers, who will raise the digital citizens of the future. Data was gathered from participants using three questionnaires written in Turkish. The results showed that internet self-efficacy, self-computer and self-internet effect digital citizenship. Internet self-efficacy also examined in terms of some variables as an important factor for digital citizenship. Findings of this study help understanding some variables’ significant contributions on preservice teachers’ digital citizenship levels. This study provides a useful guideline for increasing preservice teachers’ digital citizenship scores by determining factors which can be manipulated through system design and implementation. Keywords: digital citizenship; internet self-efficacy; self-internet; self-computer; sleep patterns

Students need academic tools and digital skills for proper social interactions in a digital society. Researchers Ribble and Park (2019) designed the S3 Framework which stresses the importance of developing safe, savvy, and social digital citizens. Using this framework, a series of interventions were developed for students and staff to increase the demonstration of appropriate digital literacy skills and digital citizenship. This mixed-methods study provided the opportunity for 6th-grade students to receive an additional intervention for internet safety, along with students and teachers sharing their knowledge and understanding of being safe, savvy, and social digital citizens. The goals of the research included determining the ways in which the internet safety training supported students’ perceptions of behavior and digital skills with technology; understanding how students have grown as safe, savvy, and social people; and identifying the ways in which the digital citizenship training for the staff supported their understanding of digital citizenship in the classroom. Findings indicated through teacher and student interviews, along with pre-assessment and post-assessment scores of the intervention that students know the right or safe answer when asked how to be safe online and teachers understand that digital citizenship and internet safety is an important component of technology in education. The results showed that students are not using, applying or transferring the knowledge of how to be safe or kind in the moment when a situation is presented.KEYWORDS: digital citizenship; internet safety; online safety; COVID, remote learning, digital skills, technology

The Toy Brick as a Communicative Device for Amplifying Children’s Voices in Research

This study aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a digital citizenship curriculum developed using online teaching for undergraduate students. For this purpose, answers were sought to the following general research questions: “How are students performing their digital citizenship skills?”, “What is the efficiency level of the developed digital citizenship curriculum?”, “What are the students’ self-evaluations during the implementation process of the developed digital citizenship curriculum?” and “What are student opinions about the implemented digital citizenship course?”. A “parallel-simultaneous design”, one of the mixed research methods, was used in this research. The content of the curriculum was determined within the framework of a needs analysis consisting of university students and field experts, and a document review. A quasi-experimental design method was used to implement the programme. A total of 39 teacher candidates, registered in the spring semester of the 2022 academic year, participated in the experimental process. A Moodle learning management system was used as the teaching environment. Participants’ digital citizenship behaviours and attitude levels were measured before and after the experimental application. It was observed that there was a significant (positive) difference between the pre-test and post-test average scores in favour of the post-test scores, and the effect value of this difference was high. It turned out that the teacher candidates’ opinions on the effectiveness of the online digital citizenship programme were positive. It is understood that the digital citizenship teaching curriculum developed for higher education can be used sustainably for similar university student groups as in this study. However, it is anticipated that the developed programme can be updated along with technological evolutions.

Nurses play a pivotal role in improving the quality of healthcare services through innovation in the nursing care delivery system by using technological advancement. Digital knowledge and mindset are useful for further developing digital skills and literacy among future nurses to form digital citizenship. This study aimed to analyze the correlation between digital knowledge and mindset with digital skills, literacy, and citizenship among nursing students. The mind sponge theory was used in study conceptualization and results interpretation. This quantitative study utilized a cross-sectional design. The population was all nursing students in two private nursing institutions located in Bangkok, Thailand (n=476) and Surabaya, Indonesia (n=179). Samples were the total population. Self-developed, valid, and reliable instrument was used in data collection. Descriptive statistics and correlation test were used in data analysis (α<.05). Findings showed that digital knowledge did not correlate with digital mindset (p=.94), but it was weakly correlated with digital skills, literacy, and citizenship (ρ=.12-.16; p<.05). Digital mindset was strongly correlated with digital skills, literacy, and citizenship (ρ=.56-.60; p<.05). Digital skills had a strong correlation with digital literacy and citizenship (ρ=.58-.67; p<.05), while digital literacy was strongly correlated with digital citizenship (ρ=.59; p=<.05). The synergy of digital mindset, skills, and literacy are recommended to support the digital citizenship formation. We strongly recommend the implementation of collaborative learning method in nursing education. This method promotes the information filtering and exchanging behaviors among students important for digital nursing.

The study aimed to investigate the relationship between ICT utilization and digital citizenship among social sciences students at Valencia College Inc., Valencia City, Bukidnon, during the second semester of the 2023-2024 school year. It involved 205 college students selected through simple random sampling. Employing a descriptive-correlational research design, the study utilized questionnaires adapted from PISA (2009) and Nordin (2026) to measure ICT utilization and digital citizenship, respectively. Mean, standard deviation, and Pearson product-moment correlation were used for data analysis. Results indicated frequent internet usage and ICT purpose among students, suggesting a high engagement level with digital technology for various tasks and activities. However, device preferences and digital skills were rated as sometimes, indicating variability in device usage and proficiency levels. Nonetheless, students spent a significant amount of time utilizing digital devices, reflecting technology's pervasive integration into their daily routine. Additionally, students demonstrated a high level of digital citizenship, exhibiting responsible, ethical, and respectful behavior in online interactions. A significant relationship was found between ICT utilization and digital citizenship, with strong correlations observed for internet usage, device preferences, ICT purpose, digital skills, and time spent. Therefore, instructors are encouraged to continue promoting digital citizenship education within their curriculum, emphasizing the importance of responsible online behavior and providing guidance on proper social media etiquette.

The growing prevalence of cybercrime, particularly among young adults, necessitates the promotion of digital citizenship to educate students about responsible online behavior and to equip them with the skills to mitigate cyber risks. The specific objective of this study was to investigate the effect of digital citizenship skills on the prevention of cybercrime among higher education students. A mixed-method approach, including surveys and interviews, was employed to collect data from 652 students in Saudi Arabia. This study found that digital citizenship generally has a significant impact on students’ awareness and prevention of cybercrime through the development of responsible online behavior. Knowledge of digital law came first, followed by beliefs about digital manners. Digital communication skills came third, followed by digital rights, knowledge, and duties in fourth place. Then, digital commerce skills and digital health beliefs came fifth and sixth, respectively. This was followed by digital access skills, then digital security, and finally digital culture. The results also revealed a negative statistical relationship between digital citizenship and cybercrimes’ various forms including national, financial, banking, social, immoral, insulting, slanderous, defaming, threatening, and harassment in virtual learning environments. These findings have significant implications for the understanding of how higher education institutions can promote digital citizenship and prevent cybercrime by integrating digital citizenship education into their curriculum, providing training for educators, and establishing clear policies and guidelines for responsible online behavior.

Gender disparities in digital citizenship: Insights from economics students in higher education

The global emergence of new media and social change have drawn attention to the topic of digital citizenship. Previous literature has examined individuals’ digital citizenship with some determinants of technology use. However, individuals’ level of social media competence (SMC) has not yet been examined in relation to digital citizenship. To increase knowledge of the ingredients that may be important for education programs to improve individuals’ digital citizenship, this study examined SMC and digital citizenship among 772 college students. The results identified that five of the six social media competencies examined were predictors of individuals’ digital citizenship. These findings provided empirical evidence of a relationship between SMC and digital citizenship, which should be considered by researchers and practitioners when formalizing educational programs, developing curricula, and designing pedagogy for improving individuals’ digital citizenship.

In this chapter, we explore the factors involved in developing digital citizenship through social media use in schools for 14-year-old students in four Nordic countries. The call for digital citizenship and digital citizenship education stems from the new and multiple ways in which young people are engaging in and communicating about civic issues through the use of social media. Schools could be considered to play a core part in developing students’ digital civic engagement, yet the field of digital citizenship education and the factors that enable engagement in schools are underexplored. To address this issue, in this chapter we have completed a mixed methods study analyzing the national curricula in the four Nordic countries and complementing this with an analysis of data from school leaders, teachers, and 14-year-old students participating in the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016. The findings of the analysis show that digital citizenship and citizenship in general are prevailing ideals in the national curricula and that schools are well-equipped technologically. Yet, both teachers and students are ambivalent in their use of social media for developing digital citizenship. Thus, we argue that digital citizenship in education is a manifold and emerging phenomenon and that students might be important guides for its further development in schools.

College students face challenges in developing social media competencies that support their participation in digital citizenship. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between digital citizenship and social media competency mediated by collective self-esteem among college students (N = 736). The web-based study was used to collect data by convenience sampling and three measurement instruments, the digital citizenship scale (α= 0.90) to measure digital citizenship, the social media competence scale for college students (α= 0.92) to measure social media competence, and the collective self-esteem scale (α= 0.94) to measure collective self-esteem. The data were analyzed using Hayes mediation analysis with 5,000 percentile bootstrap samples and a 95% confidence interval. The results of the mediation test through jamovi (Version 2.3.2) showed that collective self-esteem played a role in mediating the relationship between digital citizenship and social media competence. However, the role of collective self-esteem as a mediator is not perfect because of its small effect. The findings prove that evaluating the student's national identity is indirectly a form of attitude toward maintaining a positive group (state) to control relational activities and citizenship by adopting social media. The findings emphasize the importance of strengthening college students' collective identity to support more positive and responsible use of social media within the context of digital citizenship.

The problem addressed in this study lies in the limited comprehensive understanding of digital citizenship among certain segments of Saudi youth. Their digital awareness tends to focus primarily on technical skills, with insufficient understanding of their rights, responsibilities, and ethical behaviors in the digital environment—despite their intensive use of digital media in daily life. The importance of this study emerges in light of escalating digital challenges such as misinformation, privacy violations, and cyberbullying. Therefore, it seeks to analyze the role of digital awareness in fostering digital citizenship values among youth, using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a framework. The study was conducted on a sample of 400 young men and women from Saudi society. Findings revealed that digital media has become an integral part of Saudi youths’ daily lives, with more than half of the sample using it daily for 4 to 6 hours. Platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram were the most commonly used to access digital citizenship-related content. This intensive use has contributed significantly to reinforcing values such as national belonging, respect for laws, and community participation. Youths’ digital awareness was also reflected in their ethical conduct in the digital environment, including respecting privacy and verifying information—benefiting from Vision 2030 initiatives and various awareness campaigns. Furthermore, 79% of the respondents acknowledged that digital media enhanced essential digital traits such as intellectual honesty, cultural respect, and combating cyberbullying. However, a smaller percentage indicated variability in their level of awareness and practice, highlighting the ongoing need for educational and media efforts to strengthen digital citizenship among all youth segments. The study recommends establishing a sustainable national program for digital literacy targeting youth, to be implemented through a partnership between the Ministries of Education and Media. This program should focus on developing digital citizenship skills through educational curricula and digital platforms, with special attention to delivering awareness content via the channels most preferred by young people to ensure effective impact and engagement. Keywords: Digital Awareness – Digital Citizenship – Saudi Youth – Theory of Planned Behavior.

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of the digital literacy course taught to undergraduates with the cooperation of the Council of Higher Education (CHE) and Anadolu University on the ‘digital citizenship skills’ of social sciences teachers. In this context, 30 prospective social sciences teachers who received digital literacy training participated in the study, which employed criterion sampling, a purposive sampling technique. The study followed a pre-test and post-test uncontrolled quasi-experimental model. The digital literacy course process by distance learning covered eight weeks. At the beginning and the end of the digital literacy course, a ‘digital citizenship’ scale was applied to the prospective teachers. In research results, a significant positive difference was detected between the pre-test and post-test scores of prospective teachers obtained from the whole of the digital citizenship skills scale. Between pre-test and post-test scores of ‘digital communication’, ‘digital ethics’, and ‘critical thinking’ sub-dimensions of the digital citizenship scale, a significant difference was not detected. On the other hand, a positive significant difference was detected between scores from its digital skills, digital participation, digital rights and responsibilities, and digital commerce sub-dimensions. Similarly, between digital security points, which is another sub-dimension of the study, a significant difference was detected, though this difference was found to be negative. In this context, it is proposed that similar training should be made more common, more functional subjects in digital topics that teachers do not know should be the focus rather than those prospective teachers are expected to know, some changes regarding digital security must be implemented in institutions that teach the digital literacy course with distance learning and that these should enrich this subject further.