Digitalisation has brought about new prerequisites and conditions for citizenship education of young people all over the world. Globally, there are competing long-lived discourses on digitalisation related to education. On the one hand, digitalisation has been articulated in terms of risks and danger for education. On the other hand, digitalisation has been celebrated as the promise that will solve many, if not all, educational problems (Cuban, 1986; Selwyn, 2014; Lewin, 2016). Furthermore, research has also claimed the promise of digitalising in terms of efficiency (Selwyn, 2014). Research about digital technologies in educational settings is commonly reproducing this efficiency discourse by taking it for granted rather than problematizing it.
An occupancy with technologically determinist perspectives is leading to analysis in terms of impact and effect with less focus on the complexities of social issues (Selwyn 2014), as well as fields concerned with social issues such as citizenship education. Despite the fact that one of the main goals of education globally is to foster young people for democracy, the prerequisites and conditions for citizenship education set by digitalisation still needs deeper investigation by research.
International organisations, such as OECD and UNESCO, have formulated frameworks for teachers’ ICT competencies. Such frameworks function as policy documents, pointing out normative directions for teachers work and for countries policy development concerning ICT in education. The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about the ways in which digital resources are related to teaching of citizenship education in international frameworks for digital education.
The relationship between democracy and education has been thoroughly studied and reflected on by educational researchers and (educational) philosophers (i.e. Kant, 1784/1992; Dewey, 1916). The contemporary educational philosopher Biesta says that historically it is possible to discern two main ways of understanding the relationship between democracy and education: education for democracy and education through democracy (2007). Education for democracy comprises the transmission of values, knowledge, and skills to students so that in the future they will be able to act as democratic citizens. Education through democracy is about students acquiring democratic values, knowledge, and skills through engaging in democratic processes in school. The understanding of education through democracy can be derived from Dewey’s classical work, Democracy and Education from 1916, in which he stresses that in a vital democracy, democracy is not only a form of government but also a form of life. In this work, Dewey also stresses that a form of life, a community, is always held together through the sharing of common interests, which are constituted in communication (1916).
Biesta has suggested that in an analysis of the purpose of education a distinction should be made between three functions: qualification, socialisation, and subjectification (2006, 2011, 2014). Of specific interest in our study is the two concepts socialisation, and subjectification in relation to citizenship education. Socialisation focuses on the preparation of citizens-to-be for the successful entering into an already existing socio-political order, whereas subjectification concerns the way that democratic subjectivity is developed by engagement in political processes. Citizenship education as socialisation presupposes knowledge about what constitutes a good citizen, while the starting point of citizenship education as subjectification is the political subjects’ very “desire for democracy” (Biesta 2011:151) without knowledge of where this desire leads.
In the analysis of the framework we apply the distinction proposed by Biesta between socialisation and subjectification (2014, 2011), which helps us to focus on the following questions:
To what extent and how does digitalisation provide possibilities for, and challenges to, citizenship education? How are citizenship and citizenship education constructed in discourses actualised by frameworks for digital citizenship education?