ABSTRACT
The sphere of digitality has transformed from something we merely use or consume to an actual manifestation of the very environment in which we live, learn and teach. This includes possibilities and potentials of digital technologies as well as restrictions and challenges of the digital in educational contexts. We have increasingly entered a sphere of worldwide civic activity through digital media. Digital citizenship departs from classic notions of citizenship “to focus on performative self-enactment of digital subjects” (Hink, et al., 2019, p. 20), thus building on digital acts and conceptualizing the resulting self-construction of people´s active role in society. In this chapter, we investigate how the concepts of digital citizenship and global citizenship can be united as “global digital citizenship” (Crockett & Churches, 2017).
We aim to trace and review the current debate on global digital citizenship, identifying key terms and trends relevant for foreign language education. In this context, the role of educators needs to be addressed with a view to participating in and contributing to digital worlds. Recently, a discourse is emerging regarding the question of how to leverage the digital world to foster global citizens.
Seeking to explore the theoretical foundations as well as chosen practical implications we turn to influential publications in the field. The impact of relevant frameworks as developed in different regions of the world (e.g., Ribble’s framework on Digital Citizenship in Schools from the US context, or the Digital Citizenship Education Handbook issued by the Council of Europe) will be scrutinized with a view to implications for foreign language education. This involves the question of how the contemporary debate moves from normative frameworks and governance, through activism and alternative models of digital participation “towards cultures of creativity” (McCosker et al., 2016) that help educate the citizens of the future in foreign language education, a task we feel has been neglected in the past.
