An ambitious new research project at the University of Glasgow is looking to work with secondary schools and resource developers to help young people engage with the many moral and social challenges of life in a digitally connected world.
Drawing on a “data justice” approach, the project – Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Data ethics in the classroom and beyond – addresses a range of challenges, including big data, social media polarisation, and artificial intelligence.
This work is being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), led by UCL Institute of Education, which has identified digital citizenship and the teacher recruitment and retention crisis as priority areas for funding between 2023 and 2025.
Initially the project involves a teacher survey asking about your current practices, aims, and concerns around digital ethics. There is also an event on Teaching for Digital Citizenship on May 22 (see below for details).
While much of the discourse on digital inequality has focused on device poverty and lack of access, data justice articulates crucial issues of bias, discrimination and misrecognition which can amplify marginalisation and place some young people at liability precisely because they do have access to the digital.
Making explicit these political and structural dimensions of the digital revolution is a task which sits uneasily across the categories of the secondary curriculum.
PSHE and citizenship?
As it involves enabling young people to exercise democratic agency as citizens of the school, and preparing them for full adult citizenship, some aspects of the challenge fit neatly into PSHE and citizenship.
Current educational resources in this area, however, tend to be focused on a narrower conception of “digital safeguarding”. While keeping young people safe from online threats is of course vital, our more expansive reading of data justice aims to help young people to understand the opportunities as well as the threats, and the spaces for critical and transformative engagement in the digital space.
Religious studies?
Other aspects of data ethics involve the kind of extended engagement with ethical questions common in the religious studies classroom. Indeed, one half of the research team for this project was previously responsible for the Does religious education work? research study (2008-2013), which raised many of the questions subsequently addressed in the Commission on RE report and Ofsted’s own research review.
Philosophy and ethics?
Philosophers of computing and information have addressed a range of important questions raised by the digital revolution. Dipayan Ghosh’s 2021 book Terms of Disservice: How Silicon Valley is destructive by design, engages with the importance of understanding the economic model that underpins digital services – reminding us all that if you’re not paying for the service, you’re the product!
Meanwhile, in the 2014 book The 4th Revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping reality, Luciano Floridi wrestles with the nature of information, intelligence, and minds, asking whether harm is done when young people form themselves and their identities through interactions with artificial intelligences.
The reading list could go on, but these debates have little presence in philosophy and ethics curricula in most schools.
Computer science?
And of course, computer science and ICT has a part to play in all of this. One of the main aims of the project is to engage directly with the creators of some of the more prominent software solutions found in schools, such as ClassDojo, Google Classroom and Oak National.
The Association for Computing Machinery has its own professional code of ethics, and Silicon Valley giants have been increasingly keen to be seen to enact ethical policies, hiring philosophers and politicians into “chief ethical officer” roles, taking positions on political questions such as free speech and net neutrality which have regulatory implications for the rest of us, and engaging in multi-party summits such as the one that produced the Zanzibar Declaration on Sustainable Education in a Digital Age in 2019.
Beyond the classroom?
Beyond the classroom, schools are not the only places where young people learn about digital ethics, but consumers in the digital economy.
A recent German project – “DATAFIED – Data For and In Education” – highlighted the ways the systems schools use to record data on progression, attainment and other targets can redefine what teachers mean when they report on progress or attainment.
Many young people have become accustomed to the idea of allowing schools to collect their fingerprint data to manage lunch money or taking home devices owned by schools or tech companies with the location tracking hard-set to “on”.
One 2014 study from the Gates Foundation sought to give teachers access to real-time data from fitbit-like bracelets to help them design more engaging lessons. How might this physiological way of measuring it change what we mean by “engagement”?
The scope of the research?
The research team will work closely with 12 secondary schools and four sets of resource developers, observing practice, interviewing pupils, reflecting on key challenges as part of a national group, and making use of an innovative smartphone-enabled daily survey method with young people.
Resources will be developed in co-operation with schools to teach about digital challenges.
To address the challenges discussed above, the research team is inviting secondary teachers to get involved in a number of ways:
- Completing our teacher survey. The survey asks about your current practices, aims, and concerns around digital ethics, and what resources you draw upon at the moment. We aim to have a comprehensive snapshot of practice across the UK. Details here.
- Building action research communities of practice, bringing together teachers, young people, and software developers to codesign resources to meet the most pressing challenges in the sector. Participating schools will benefit from long-term engagement with our researchers, and access to resources from Glasgow University Software Services. To express an interest in getting involved, email me here.
- A British Educational Research Association (BERA) event entitled Teaching for Digital Citizenship and aimed at teachers is taking place on May 22 at 9:30am. Details here.
Research is on-going, and we hope to launch a policy report and open access codesigned resources toward the end of 2025, so stay tuned.
- Dr David Lundie is senior lecturer in education and deputy head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Glasgow. You can contact him via david.lundie@glasgow.ac.uk
Further information & resources
- University of Glasgow: Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Survey: www.gla.ac.uk/digitalethics
- University of Glasgow: Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Overview: www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/educationresearch/teachingfordigitalcitizenship
- BERA: Teaching for Digital Citizenship Event (May 22, 2023): http://www.bera.ac.uk/event/teaching-for-digital-citizenship-2023