Digital Citizenship for Cyber Smart Students: A Framework for Schools in Pakistan
Keywords:
Cyber Safety, Digital Citizenship, Secondary Schools, PakistanAbstract
The rapid permeation of technology has made it imperative for school leaders and policy planners to translate digital maturity in the online space and to prepare responsible and cybersafe digital citizens. As cyber safety in Pakistan is legally gaining traction, schools bear more responsibility for harnessing digital citizenship among young people. The notion of Digital Citizenship is still at its infancy stage in Pakistan and this paper attempts to fill the existing gap by providing a review of literature to synthesize the concept of Digital Citizenship and its application into school curriculum. The current research contextualizes Ribble’s Digital Citizenship Framework (2015) and proposes four over-arching themes for schools in Pakistan to strengthen cyber civility and digital safety skills among students. The study presents a concept analysis for Digital Citizenship Educational Frameworks, the initial search was conducted via a range of databases under the keywords Digital Citizenship, secondary schools, and cyber etiquettes. A total of fifty-nine frameworks were retrieved, of which ten met the inclusion criteria based on relevance to the context. The literature surveyed, asserts that schools need robust policies and Digital Citizenship curriculum to promote a safer society for adolescents. The paper also presents recommendations to integrate the proposed guidelines into school curriculum.
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