Information for Schools
Teaching for Digital Citizenship is a collaboration between academics at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh which focusses on how young people develop ethical perspectives in digital spaces. Our goal is to understand the role that online content and interactions play in shaping young people’s behaviour, morals and attitudes. We are interested in all aspects of digital ethics, from the approach that schools adopt to teaching for digital citizenship to young people’s lived experience of the digital world both in the classroom and beyond it.
Through participatory methods, we hope to capture some of the important, and often unnoticed work on ethics that takes place in the everyday life of your school. We’re also interested in how your school’s ethos is reflected in online spaces and communications, and in the question of how best to extend the reach of messages with ethical impact.
We know this is a very busy time, so we’ve made getting involved in our project as easy as possible by designing activities that complement existing practices, require little commitment from staff and that are least disruptive to student learning.
Simply email digitalcitizenship@glasgow.ac.uk and our research team will contact you to discuss how best we can work together in a way that suits you.
Benefits to Schools
The project will help schools to demonstrate the impact of their work in supporting personal, moral and ethical development of young people. This can be particularly challenging considering the disruption in recent years to the routines and practices that contribute to a school’s ethos and identity. In working with us to understand and develop new approaches to teaching for digital citizenship, we hope to help place your school at the forefront of current research already generating interest from government, school improvement and inspection, NGOs, charities and other organisations that support schools PSHE provision.
By the end of the project, we hope to have:
- Co-produced resources that support teaching for digital citizenship.
- Contributed to the professional development of staff undertaking research degrees and those engaging in continued professional development through, for example, practitioner enquiry and evidence-based practice research.
- Enhanced safeguarding and student wellbeing by supporting decision making as young people interact online.
- Raised awareness about digital ethics and the influence online experiences have on ethical decision making.
Benefits to society and knowledge development.
The pace and breadth of change in schooling and society provides us with a unique opportunity to reflect on the ways we prepare young people with the ethical, moral capacities they need to advocate for change and shape the kind of world they would like to live in. This project will build tools which all schools can use to better understand the ethical challenges faced by young people, and to guide schools in implementing a strategy to enhance their personal development.
Simply email digitalcitizenship@glasgow.ac.uk and our research team will contact you to discuss how best we can work together in a way that suits you.