Revisiting Cultural and Global Learning? The Impact of Digital Citizenship on Foreign Language Education

Abstract

Recently, concepts of cultural and global learning have been faced with the challenge of integrating larger digital transformations in society into their scope. This is particularly interesting from the vantage point of Digital Citizenship Education (DCE). As an educational initiative, DCE seeks to empower children–and hence, learners–to thrive in a world that is thoroughly changing in light of digital advancements. While these initiatives and concepts rightly entail aspects as wide as creativity, active participation, information literacy, or critical reflection, their link to cultural and global learning in foreign language education has remained less clear. Questions that spring to mind, for example, include in what ways cultural diversity can become a classroom focus through the aid of digital media, in how far inter- and transcultural learning can be renegotiated or how learners can engage with global topics–including digitalization itself–from a participatory perspective. This article therefore tries to retrace research on DCE, identify how discourses on DCE and cultural as well as global learning can be merged, and present a multidimensional model for anchoring DCE within foreign language education and teaching practice.

Keywords

• foreign languages
• literacy
• digital wilds
• digital citizenship