Scotland is a nation held captive. Since 2007/2010 it has been under the control of a socially interfering/fiscally austere, independence-obsessed/democracy-denying SNP/Conservative Holyrood/Westminster government ruling Scotland/the UK like a single party state (delete as preferred). These two polarized positions, and their ideological proponents, illustrate the challenges of presenting a coherent narrative of current events in the digital sphere. Scotland is far from alone in facing the challenges of narrative and affective polarization through digital media. Teaching competing narratives can help young people to be open-minded toward polarizing content in the classroom. Skills of critical evaluation are needed to help young people evaluate competing narratives. Virtue epistemology frames affective polarization in terms of questions such as: what makes a person good from an epistemic or intellectual point of view? What kinds of qualities do such individuals possess? How do such individuals model these epistemic qualities? How do we become open-minded? What kinds of emotions and motivations are characteristic of open-minded persons, how can they be acquired, and what benefits do these virtuous dispositions have? (Broncano-Berrocal & Carter 2020). This presentation draws on a virtue epistemology approach to understand the challenge of refurbishing a coherent moral education for young people in a digital age. This presentation focuses on the effectiveness of Parallel Histories, a series of history resources for teaching source evaluation and argumentation through contested narratives, including Scottish, Irish and Israel/Palestine history by teaching two competing narratives using a mix of digital sources. Drawing on a UK-wide survey of secondary school teachers on the challenges, practices and aims of teaching for digital citizenship, the presentation highlights teachers who are aware of, or make use of Parallel Histories resources, and asks whether their responses and framing of digital challenges are different from the norm. Conducted as part of a large ESRC-funded project “Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Data Ethics in the Classroom and Beyond”, the survey asks teachers to identify the principal challenges of teaching young people for moral autonomy in a digital age. Survey results will facilitate an understanding of the dominant understandings of digital and data ethics, the place of affective polarization, differences between the four nations of the UK, and the influence of different resource providers such as Parallel Histories in framing challenges for practitioners.

Broncano-Berrocal, F. & Carter, J.A. (2020) The Epistemology of Group Disagreement. Routledge. Parallel Histories: https://parallelhistories.org.uk