Pathways to professional digital competence to teach for digital citizenship: social science teacher education in flux

ABSTRACT

Increasingly pervasive digital technologies in societies are placing complex demands on the development of young people’s digital citizenship and digital competence. Social science education and teacher education (TE) play important, but poorly understood, roles in this development. Through reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews, this paper explores 15 Swedish teacher educators’ (TEDs) views of teaching for digital citizenship, particularly social science TE’s role. We also consider organisational and personal conditions that may influence TEDs’ views of professional digital competence (PDC) for such teaching. Their views are examined through a postdigital lens, with a focus on democratic implications in evolving socio-technical environments. The results indicate that TEDs acknowledge the importance of social science TE in teaching for digital citizenship, but find maintaining responsiveness to societal changes challenging. Challenges are also posed by the multidisciplinary character of social science education, including how personal trajectories shape TEDs’ views of their dual-didactic task of teaching to teach for digital citizenship. This paper contributes knowledge of how TEDs, as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ in social science TE, navigate between written and performed education policy in teaching for digital citizenship, with specific attention to the dynamic character of PDC in social science education.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital citizenship
• professional digital competence
• social science teacher education
• teacher educators

Introduction

Democracies across the world are backsliding in new high-choice information environments (Wikforss, 2023) with increasingly pervasive digital technologies, such as smart devices, wearable technologies, and electronic resources. Consequently, research and education policy have emphasised the importance of schools for developing young people’s digital citizenship and digital competence to act as members of society (e.g. Cervera & Caena, 2022; European Commission, 2021; Willermark et al., 2023). This role includes, for example, supporting young people’s competence to engage critically with algorithmic information streams, disinformation, and recently generative artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT (Von Gillern et al., 2024; Vuorikari et al., 2022). The concept of digital citizenship springs from a broad view of citizenship that emerged at the turn of the century, extending beyond the legal dimension to something citizens both have and do. Key characteristics include the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values related to digital technologies that people need to act as citizens (Dumbrava, 2017; Frau-Meigs et al., 2017). This intersection between democracy and socio-technical environments (e.g. relations between humans, technology, and society) are core issues addressed in research with a postdigital lens (Jandrić et al., 2018). Thus, we use a postdigital lens (described in detail below) to critically examine teaching for digital citizenship in shifting socio-technical environments.

In many western countries, including Sweden (the empirical setting of this paper), topics related to democracy and citizenship are primarily addressed in social science education (or ‘social studies’; Barton & Avery, 2016). Social science education deals with dynamic subject content, because it responds to shifting societal phenomena (Sandahl, 2018). In this regard, Swedish education policies have mirrored global trends by incorporating aspects of digital citizenship and digital competence, as manifested in the national curricula for social science education (cf. Erstad & Voogt, 2018; Erstad et al., 2021). For instance, schoolteachers foster pupils’ responsible use of digital media and understanding of digitalisation (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2018; cf. Choi et al., 2018; Vajen et al., 2023).¹ Therefore, teacher education institutions (TEIs) in Sweden and other countries must provide social science student teachers with opportunities to develop conceptual and practical knowledge to teach for digital citizenship (cf. Cervera & Caena, 2022).

The global focus on digital citizenship in social science teacher education (TE) adds to existing challenges in preparing teachers to teach for democracy. As the meaning and practice of democracy are temporally and spatially situated, teacher educators (TEDs) prepare student teachers for a practice in which teaching for democracy is grounded in the present but also in motion towards ‘not-yetness’ (Ross, 2017). This entails tensions that both TEIs and TEDs need to consider. For TEDs, tensions emerge between professionalism and policy. While codifying democratic education provides guidelines, it may restrict TEDs’ promotion of democratic understandings grounded in evolving societal issues, which highlights the importance of TEDs’ professionalism (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020).

Against this background, and with time already limited for democratic education in European (including Swedish) TE, TEDs need to address teaching for democracy in ways grounded in the digitally infused lives of student teachers and pupils (cf. Raiker et al., 2020), and in motion towards an unknown future. Thus, a growing body of research highlights the importance of TEDs’ professional understanding of digital technologies’ implications for democracy, and abilities to translate this understanding into meaningful teaching and learning activities (Örtegren, 2024a; Vajen et al., 2023; Von Gillern et al., 2024). For this, more research is needed, including studies of how digital competence and its relations to societal issues are addressed in TE in Sweden and other countries (Flores, 2023; Lindfors et al., 2021).

Our aim is therefore to explore TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE. In the next section, we describe the conceptual framework and the main foci of our study, including the research questions.

Conceptual framework

We use three theoretical concepts to assist our exploration of TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE. These are a notion of TEDs as ‘street-level bureaucrats’, TEDs’ dual-didactic task supported by professional digital competence (PDC), and a postdigital lens, which we use in the discussion to examine TEDs’ teaching for digital citizenship. We combine these concepts to draw critical attention to teaching for digital citizenship, with a focus on democratic implications in evolving socio-technical environments.

TEDs as street-level bureaucrats

There is substantial uncertainty in what teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE entails. For example, the ‘responsible use’ of digital media mentioned in the Swedish curriculum is open to diverse interpretations. Similarly, the academic literature conceptualises digital citizenship and related terms rooted in different understandings of digital technologies’ roles and implications for citizenship in society. This includes the associated knowledge and skills needed by citizens (Frau-Meigs et al., 2017; Örtegren, 2024a). Consequently, social science TEDs must apply professional interpretation of digital citizenship in teaching and learning contexts.

This ambiguity is exacerbated by the diversity of social science TEDs’ disciplines, epistemologies, and subject conceptions (Barton & Avery, 2016; Johansson, 2017), both generally and in terms of topics related to democracy and citizenship. Moreover, as illustrated by the Swedish case reported here, TEIs have autonomy in designing their social science TE programmes, provided they are consistent with national requirements (Johansson, 2017). This autonomy introduces at least two interrelated levels of interpretation that can influence student teachers’ knowledge of digital citizenship: TEIs’ planning of structure and contents at programme level, and TEDs’ programme enactment at TE classroom level.

TEDs’ role at the latter is of particular interest here. The literature highlights TEIs’ responsibility for developing social science student teachers’ digital competence (cf. Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020; Instefjord & Munthe, 2016, 2017). However, TEDs are responsible for planning and enacting teaching and learning activities, such as developing student teachers’ self-efficacy and beliefs about digital technologies (Tondeur et al., 2019; Uerz et al., 2018). Hence, at the TE classroom level, TEDs can be regarded as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ navigating between ‘policy as written and policy as performed’ (Lipsky, 2010, p. xvii). TEDs mediate interactions between government level education policies (e.g. TE degree objectives and national school curricula) and citizens (student teachers and their future pupils). Here, street-level bureaucracy refers to TEDs’ professional interpretation of policy when planning and enacting teaching and learning activities focusing on digital citizenship, while retaining responsiveness to the educational and societal contexts. TEDs thus require sufficient understanding of digital citizenship, including relevant knowledge and skills to make professional decisions—the ‘performed’ education policy (Lipsky, 2010) compared to written policy. TEDs’ performed policy will inevitably influence pupils’ opportunities to develop digital citizenship and competence. Given this, TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE warrant particular attention.

TEDs’ dual-didactic task and the required PDC

Despite this crucial role in bridging education policies and activities in school classrooms (Cervera & Caena, 2022; Cochran-Smith et al., 2020), TEDs are struggling to develop their own and student teachers’ competence in digital citizenship and related didactics (i.e. teaching and learning activities) (Örtegren, 2022; Velander et al., 2023). This highlights a need for better integration of digital citizenship aspects in TE, including research on TEDs’ support of student teachers (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020; Villar-Onrubia et al., 2022), particularly in social science TE (Vajen et al., 2023; Von Gillern et al., 2024).

The required support of student teachers is a dual-didactic task, as TEDs are second-order teachers teaching both subject content and how to teach that content, i.e. how to teach and develop young pupils’ digital citizenship and digital competence in social science education (cf. Lindfors & Olofsson, 2023; Uerz et al., 2018). This task requires profession-specific knowledge and skills related to teaching in schools, but international reports show variation in requirements and professional development for TEDs (Cochran-Smith et al., 2020). Thus, there is substantial variation in TEDs’ pedagogical experience and PDC, including their ability to engage with the dual-didactic task. The PDC needed here is a topic of ongoing research-informed discussion, in efforts to match what ‘newly qualified teachers meet in their profession and the preparations they have received during their teacher education’ (Lund et al., 2014, p. 282; cf. Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018).

PDC has been conceptualised in different ways, but common dimensions include technical skills and knowledge, general and subject-specific didactic competence, attitudes, and awareness of both societal and ethical aspects of digital technologies (e.g. Falloon, 2020; Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020; McGarr & McDonagh, 2019). This provides a starting point for the understanding of PDC embraced here. Recent discussions also underscore a need for PDC to include a critical and holistic understanding of digital technologies’ roles and implications in society and education, and it is crucial that TEDs’ practices and future teachers are ‘responsive to the context in which they unfold’ (Lund & Aagaard, 2020; cf., p. 43; Brevik et al., 2019; Skantz-Åberg et al., 2022). Based on this, and in line with arguments by Lindfors and Olofsson (2023), we understand PDC as ‘always in the making’, with a degree of plasticity and temporality (Almås et al., 2021). Hence, TEDs and schoolteachers need dynamic PDC to teach for digital citizenship, for example, awareness of changes in technical skills and knowledge, didactic digital competence, and understanding of digital technologies in society. In the evolving contexts of social science education, such dynamic PDC is important because ‘traditional’ conceptions of citizenship insufficiently address how the ‘digital world is embedded in our lives and the larger structures that govern them’ (Hintz et al., 2019, p. 16).

This multi-faceted understanding of citizenship suggests that PDC in social science education should include an understanding of teaching and learning activities both in classroom contexts and within broader socio-technical environments where the digital is an important part (cf. Lund & Aagaard, 2020; Markauskaite et al., 2023). Here, it can be useful to discuss PDC in terms of dimensions (e.g. didactic digital competence), its relevance for TEDs’ dual-didactic task, and their profession-specific knowledge and skills. While such dimensions can make research inquiries meaningful, they are also arbitrary. Dimensions of TEDs’ PDC are entangled with both each other (e.g. technical skills, didactic digital competence, and an understanding of socio-technical environments) and democratic issues beyond social science TE classrooms (Markauskaite et al., 2023; Örtegren, 2024a). Thus, to bridge education policies and pupils’ development of digital citizenship and digital competence, TEDs must reflect on their own assumptions in a broader societal context, e.g. teaching for digital citizenship related to social justice (cf. Cochran-Smith et al., 2020). To do this, TEDs need relevant and dynamic skills, knowledge, and understanding of the democratic implications of digital technologies, which we refer to as part of PDC.

A postdigital lens on TEDs’ PDC to teach for digital citizenship

Conceptualisations of PDC often emphasise instrumental and deterministic approaches to digital technologies, for example how digital technologies can ‘enhance’ learning with limited attention to democracy and citizenship (Villar-Onrubia et al., 2022). Here, we seek to offer more meaningful ways of discussing digital technologies and citizenship.

To this end, we use a postdigital lens (Jandrić et al., 2018) which includes a critical and holistic understanding of PDC and how digital technologies are embedded in education and society. Postdigital theory can be used to describe a societal condition of digital embeddedness, but it can also be used as a lens to examine assumptions about digital technologies in ways that meaningfully consider socio-technical relations in education and society (Knox, 2019), as in this paper.

We use a postdigital lens to draw critical focus both to digital technologies and their socio-technical relations (Fawns et al., 2023), with a focus on views of digital citizenship and their democratic implications. Digital citizenship is not limited to ‘the digital’, but comes into being in entanglements of humans, digital technologies, and social practices. These entanglements include relations with societal structures and social issues, e.g. power and social justice, with implications for citizenship in ways that are not digital but would have been inconceivable without the digital dimension (Jandrić & Ford, 2022; Jandrić et al., 2018; Örtegren, 2024b). TEDs’ PDC to teach for digital citizenship is dependent on such entanglements (Markauskaite et al., 2023; cf. Jandrić & Ford, 2022; for a discussion, see; Örtegren, 2024a), which mirrors the temporality of teaching for democracy in social science education.

Similarly, just as citizenship cannot be understood in isolation from digital technologies, ‘digital technologies and competencies cannot be understood in isolation from a larger mix of tools, practices, goals, people, etc. that constitute teaching’ (Markauskaite et al., 2023, p. 194). We therefore draw attention to TEDs’ views of societal issues in relation to digital technologies and the role of social science TE to address them. We also address TEDs’ related views of their PDC and the conditions for teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE. We then critically discuss TEDs’ views in ways that consider the entangled character of digital citizenship and such teaching, and how this has democratic implications.

Framing our study through the conceptual framework

Our conceptual framework emphasises the importance of understanding TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE. Examples include TEDs’ views of the content the teaching should address, why it should be addressed, and their PDC to plan and enact such teaching and learning activities. Therefore, we posed the following research questions (RQs) for our study:

RQ1.

According to TEDs, what is social science TE’s role in teaching for digital citizenship?

RQ2.

How do TEDs describe conditions for their PDC to teach for digital citizenship in social science TE?

In the final section we critically discuss TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE and related PDC using a postdigital lens, considering democratic implications in evolving socio-technical environments. The paper thus contributes knowledge of how TEDs navigate between written and performed education policy in teaching for digital citizenship, with attention to the dynamic character of social science education.

Method

Empirical context

In Sweden, a total of 19 TEIs prepare social science teachers. Student teachers choose one of two study tracks: compulsory-school teaching (ages 13–15) or upper-secondary school teaching (ages 16–19). Both tracks lead to a master’s degree (4–5.5 years of full-time study, 240–330 ECTS).² Social science TE also includes specialisation in another school subject, school placement (30 ECTS), and courses in Core Education Subjects (60 ECTS). The core subjects include educational science mandatory for all student teachers, regardless of subject specialisation, for example on teaching, assessment, and schools’ role in fostering democratic citizens.

Swedish TEIs operate within the framework of the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance, which outlines degree objectives that TEIs interpret locally to design their TE programmes. Due to this decentralised governance, social science TE programme design and content vary to some degree across TEIs (Johansson, 2017). Of particular interest here is content related to digital citizenship at the TE classroom level, where TEDs’ views of digital citizenship, including their PDC to teach for digital citizenship, may influence how they plan and enact teaching and learning activities.

Data collection

This study focused on social science TE at five TEIs of various age and size spread across Sweden. First, to gain valuable contextual information for subsequent interviews, e.g. how subject content is linked to subject didactics in the curriculum, the first author used a purposive sampling approach (Cohen et al., 2018) to analyse programme and course syllabi on the TEI websites. The purpose was to identify course areas that included issues relevant to digital citizenship. In Sweden, programme and course syllabi are mandatory control instruments that TEDs need to consider when teaching, while study guides outline the planned opportunities for student teachers to develop competences and skills to meet expected learning objectives. To ensure the relevance of the identified course areas, the analysis included study guides provided upon request.

In total, 42 course documents (programme and course syllabi and study guides, 322 pages) were collected. These documents pertained to 17 social science TE courses taught by the TEDs who were later interviewed in the study. By focusing on text in the documents related to digital citizenship and digital competence, the authors gained an understanding of institutional conditions that may influence TEDs’ PDC and teaching for digital citizenship.

Based on the 17 courses we identified 18 relevant TEDs, and 15 of these agreed to be interviewed. The number of participants varied across the five TEIs depending on local programme design (1, 3, 3, 3, 5).

Participants

The 15 TEDs had taught social science TE on average for 13 years (0.5–30 years) and held various academic positions, as PhD students or junior lecturers (3), senior lecturers (6), or associate professors (6). They had diverse disciplinary backgrounds, from education (5) to political science and sociology (10), which reflects the multidisciplinary character of social science education.

The interviews

To develop a deep understanding of TEDs’ views, the first author conducted semi-structured interviews (Cohen et al., 2018) in April and May of 2022: 14 via Zoom and one in person (12.6 hours in total, mean 50 min). An interview guide, developed using prior research reviewed for this study, provided consistency across topics pertaining to social science TE: digital citizenship in society and schools, TEDs’ dual-didactic task and PDC to teach for digital citizenship, and background questions (e.g. experience as a TED). The semi-structured format allowed for flexibility, for example follow-up questions.

Without being referred to as such, various aspects of digital citizenship are addressed in steering documents for schools in Sweden, which TEIs and TEDs need to consider. Therefore, the interviews first focused on relevant topics without reference to ‘digital citizenship’. Halfway into the interviews, the term was introduced together with graphic elicitation to provide a common point of reference and stimulate discussions on the visual stimulus and the domain of study. In this approach, which can provide data difficult to generate through verbal dialogue alone (Crilly et al., 2006), TEDs were asked to reflect on a list produced by the authors that included aspects of digital citizenship commonly described in the reviewed literature. The list was presented as one of many possible conceptual representations. The interviews were transcribed verbatim (210 pages), with TEDs able to comment on encrypted copies prior to analysis. Throughout the study, the authors adhered to standard ethical principles regarding participant information, consent, confidentiality, and use of research data, as stated by the Swedish Research Council (2017).

Data analysis

We imported the transcripts into NVivo Release 1.7 (QSR International) to search, organise, and code the data. Following Braun et al. (2019), we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of the transcripts, which qualitatively focused on meaning-based patterns in semantic or latent forms. As specific aspects of the data were of interest, we initially used three higher-order codes to organise the data: contents, motives, and conditions related to teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE. The analysis involved six nonlinear phases: data familiarisation, initial deductive coding based on the interview guide, code grouping based on similarity, and construction, revision, definition, and write-up of 10 subthemes and three main themes (Table 1).

Table 1. Example of a generated theme.

Higher-order code	Code	Subtheme	Theme	Quotations
Conditions	Organisational: policy and steering	(Un)desired reliance	Navigating pathways in flux	‘ … one has to trust that those who are program directors have … incorporated digitalisation’
”	Personal: interest or experience	Personal trajectory as a facilitator or inhibiter	”	‘But I believe that we perhaps have different roles … I would probably send in someone younger to teach in this case’.

Results

We describe our three generated themes using a pathways analogy. Theme 1, possible pathways, concerns the variation in aspects of digital citizenship that are (or should be) addressed in social science TE and how they are (or should be) addressed. Theme 2, (dis-)embarking on pathways, focuses on reasons for engaging with digital citizenship in social science TE, and the scope of its responsibility. Theme 3, navigating pathways in flux, concerns conditions (organisational and personal) for TEDs’ PDC to teach for digital citizenship in the dynamic context of social science education. Themes 1 and 2 are mainly used to answer RQ1, while theme 3 is mainly used to answer RQ2.

Theme 1: possible pathways

While most TEDs agreed that social science TE should address aspects of digital citizenship, views varied regarding what aspects should be addressed and how, indicating several possible pathways. The most common aspect was source criticism, encompassing for example fake news and algorithms. Many connected source criticism to schools’ task to foster democratic citizens, often linked to media and information literacy. As TED5 highlighted, ‘for an aspiring social science teacher, I think media and information literacy is … a very central part. Source criticism is a central part’.

While acknowledging the importance of source criticism, some TEDs raised concerns. For example, reflecting on past school teaching experience and current TE, TED1 highlighted the risk of ‘fostering people who are too source-critical’, potentially ‘conspiracy theorists’, and neglecting the role of trusting information. Others described a tendency to focus on the drawbacks of digital technologies. These TEDs stressed the need to include also positive examples of digitalisation. Thus, while source criticism may be a central aspect of teaching for digital citizenship, this view is not uncontested.

Albeit to a lesser degree, TEDs also associated digital citizenship with more holistic views of the digital competence needed by members of society. For instance, TED5 stressed that ‘digital competence … is delivering the social abilities to choose how one wishes to be an active citizen in a democracy’. Similarly, TED8 argued that ‘if you are excluded from the digital forum, you are no longer participating in democratic life’. Thus, the variation in TEDs’ views also encompassed broader notions of digital citizenship.

TEDs’ views of how digital citizenship is (or should be) addressed in social science TE also varied. The approach at some TEIs is reportedly fragmented. For example, TED2 stated that ‘there are some fragments here and there, but there is no super systematisation’. However, this might not be due to a lack of awareness of digital citizenship’s importance. TED10 emphasised that ‘you need to have a teacher who is aware of [digital citizenship]’, but their TEI focused on ‘other things that are also necessary’. TED2 also noted that digital citizenship can be ‘something you touch upon when you talk about … other things’, addressing it on an ad hoc basis. Several TEDs therefore argued for the integration of digital citizenship into subject courses, highlighting new perspectives on society, democracy, and technology. As TED7 explained, digital citizenship must be ‘incorporated as more of a natural… not as a separate part’. This indicates gaps in TEDs’ views between how digital citizenship is addressed in social science TE and how it should be addressed.

Two TEIs had strengthened the focus on digital citizenship, but didactic aspects seem to be limited. For instance, TED4, responsible for a course on societal and political challenges related to emerging technologies, stressed its importance for student teachers’ opportunities to think about and understand ‘relations between technologies, media, democracy’. However, the course and programme context seem to support student teachers’ own understanding rather than how it can be taught. This limited link to didactics reflects a tendency in four of the five TEIs, as illustrated by TED14: ‘We talk a lot about social science didactics, but digital citizenship didactics? What would that look like?’

In addition to content integration, TEDs highlighted the importance of helping student teachers develop practical knowledge related to digital citizenship. In alignment with TEDs’ dual-didactic task, one suggestion was to foster critical self-reflection on topics such as politics, media, and the dynamic character of social science teachers’ work. Some stressed the importance of acting as role models by addressing digital citizenship in their courses. For instance, TED11 emphasised that how TEDs ‘teach and present and talk about democracy and do democracy in different ways through digitalisation can … be passed on in their [student teachers’] way of using digital tools’.

In summary, possible pathways reflects a variation in views of how digital citizenship is (or should be) addressed in social science TE. Such teaching is reportedly an important aspect of TEDs’ dual-didactic task, particularly source criticism, but links to didactics appear to be few.

Theme 2: (dis-)embarking on pathways

The theme (dis-)embarking on pathways concerns TEDs’ reasons for including (or not including) aspects of digital citizenship in social science TE. In accordance with their dual-didactic task, a strong motive of eight TEDs was digital citizenship’s significance in the skills and knowledge that student teachers need in their future careers. For instance, some TEDs highlighted a need to help student teachers to understand complex information flows, so they could similarly help pupils. Others stressed TEDs’ role in promoting student teachers’ digital competence and how this will benefit pupils, as illustrated by TED5: ‘Future teachers must … be able to teach others a certain basic digital competence’. Likewise, TED10 stated that ‘learning to manage the digitalised world is absolutely crucial’ for pupils.

Despite a prevalent view that teaching and exercising digital citizenship requires digital competence, four TEDs expressed scepticism. According to TED4, digital citizenship is ‘not anything one really needs digital competence for’. Similarly, TED5 argued that ‘if you have this basic knowledge, you can then apply it digitally’, for example, when engaging with source criticism.

Many TEDs also argued that schools, and particularly social science education, must be responsive to societal changes, and therefore social science TE should address digital citizenship. According to TED3, ‘the more digitalised society becomes, and particularly for young people, the more important it is to consider’. Reflecting on previous school teaching experience, TED6 similarly highlighted that ‘the world … is present in the classroom in a way that was not the case before’. Hence, as underlined by TED1, it has become more important to ‘make them [pupils] see that democracy is so much more than understanding what the parliament and the government are’.

Further, in alignment with TEDs’ dual-didactic task, about a third of the TEDs highlighted how digital technologies have become embedded in society, with implications for social science TE. TED8 asked ‘if there is any distinction between democracy and digitalisation nowadays’, and stressed that they must be jointly considered when preparing student teachers to teach for democracy. Likewise, TED14 emphasised how, ‘In this aquarium that is society, we’re swimming in a new liquid now than we did 20 years ago, and that needs to be considered’, by addressing how algorithms impact politics for example. However, this embeddedness can make it difficult to draw attention to digital technologies when discussing democracy. As highlighted by TED4, student teachers’ future pupils are ‘in a world in which these types of technologies are so embedded … to them, digitalisation as a term is completely useless’.

In addition to student teachers’ future careers and responsiveness to societal changes, TEDs’ personal trajectories seemed to influence their reasons for addressing digital citizenship in social science TE. Having taught at schools, TED6 asked ‘who is supposed to know these things if not the social science teacher?’ Research interests and disciplinary background also seemed to influence TEDs’ views. As TED8 (among others) explained, ‘I’m a bit younger, I’ve grown up with the digital … and you know, I have this background in [discipline]’. Accordingly, such factors facilitate an understanding of why digital citizenship is important in social science TE.

While generally agreeing that social science TE has an important role in addressing digital citizenship, TEDs’ views differed regarding the scope of responsibility compared to other programme areas. A small group argued that Core Education Subjects also should address digital citizenship because all schoolteachers need such skills and knowledge. For example, TED1 explained that social science TE ‘can’t give them [student teachers] all the knowledge’ they require.

To summarise, (dis-)embarking on pathways concerns TEDs’ reasons for why social science TE should (or should not) address digital citizenship and its scope of responsibility compared to other programme areas. In accordance with TEDs’ dual-didactic task, common reasons included preparing future schoolteachers for their careers and the responsiveness of social science TE to societal changes, which often seemed related to TEDs’ personal trajectories.

Theme 3: navigating pathways in flux

The previous themes focus on what aspects of digital citizenship are (or should be) addressed and associated reasons. The final theme, navigating pathways in flux, concerns TEDs’ views of the conditions (organisational and personal) for PDC to teach for digital citizenship in social science TE, with references to organisational conditions being three times more common.

Organisational conditions

Reportedly, responsiveness to societal changes also poses organisational challenges in TEDs’ PDC. For instance, discussing digitalisation of society and subject content, TED12 stressed that ‘It’s as if reality is one step ahead’ but, as emphasised by TED13, ‘change is part of the work’ in social science education. This indicates challenges for subject content and PDC to stay up to date.

In this regard, several TEDs noted that support through research inevitably lags behind societal changes. In the words of TED13, this forces TEDs ‘to lay down the rails as the train is going’, addressing digital citizenship through trial and error. Without such support in their dual-didactic task, several TEDs emphasised that, in the face of changes driven by digitalisation, all they can do is to provide student teachers with basic knowledge. As TED8 explained, ‘it is very hard to know what will come next in such a changing digital landscape’.

A third organisational challenge for TEDs’ PDC relates to boundary-making around subject content. Citing cuts in teaching hours, many TEDs stressed the necessity of prioritising some subject content. While the majority argued that digital citizenship is important in social science TE, some, like TED2, asked ‘How much time should we spend discussing the role of artificial intelligence in society?’ Others, like TED14, highlighted how digital citizenship seemed like ‘hard’ science and thus beyond the competence boundaries of ‘soft’ science in their department.

Some called for discussions on which TEI departments are best equipped to teach the various areas of social science TE. Such cross-departmental discussions are reportedly difficult, because staffing is tied to TEI funding. As TED14 explained, social science education is based on several disciplines, hence each involved department can argue that social science TE ‘should have some more cultural geography, should have some more law, should have some more of this’, etc.

The last organisational aspect concerns reliance on others. TEDs who viewed digital citizenship as important, but did not apparently address it themselves, mentioned others who probably address it, e.g. school practicum supervisors, tech-savvy colleagues, and TEDs teaching didactics. Many expressed uncertainty regarding what subject content colleagues covered, so ‘one has to trust that program directors have … incorporated digitalisation’ into the courses, as TED8 explained. When asked if support through stronger national and local steering could ensure that digital citizenship is addressed in social science TE, like TEDs wanted, several stressed that such reforms are slow and unproductive. Steering documents like program and course syllabi reportedly provide limited practical guidance regarding digital technologies, and their presence is sometimes more of ‘a push from outside [TE]’, as TED8 put it.

Personal conditions

Personal conditions that apparently influence TEDs’ views of PDC to teach for digital citizenship were also mentioned. Some described how former occupations, research, or personal interests had stimulated their reflections on digital technologies in politics and society. These covered, for example, how digital technologies permeate society and influence civic engagement. Such reflections seem to contribute to a feeling of having PDC to teach about digital citizenship as subject content. However, when asked about teaching to teach for digital citizenship, most TEDs expressed uncertainty, as illustrated by TED14: ‘There’s translation work to be done … my repertoire is rather thin’.

Conversely, personal trajectories apparently influenced five TEDs’ views of not being expected to have PDC to teach for digital citizenship, where four referred to their disciplinary background outside of education. Research, personal interests, or age were also mentioned. TED11, for example, claimed to be ‘very far away from the digital world that many young people inhabit’, and TED15 asserted that ‘we [TEDs] may have our different functions’, suggesting that a younger colleague may be more suitable to address digital citizenship. Some also expressed that addressing digital technologies can be awkward due to TEDs’ inadequate PDC, and/or student teachers’ more robust digital competence. In the words of TED14, ‘We [TEDs] … have put our trust in our students and their existing connection to today’s internet environment’, instead of explicitly addressing digital citizenship and digital competence.

In sum, navigating pathways in flux concerns organisational and personal conditions for TEDs’ views of PDC to teach for digital citizenship, with challenges related inter alia to TEI structures. Personal trajectories are also relevant, and can contribute to a sense of preparedness to teach about digital citizenship, but not necessarily to teach teaching for digital citizenship.

Discussion and conclusions

The purpose of our paper was to explore TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE, specifically social science TE’s role, and conditions for related PDC. In this final section, we discuss the results using a postdigital lens, focusing on TEDs’ views while considering the entangled character of digital citizenship in education and society, and potential democratic implications.

Broadly, TEDs stressed the importance of social science TE in teaching for digital citizenship. A strong motive was their dual-didactic task of strengthening student teachers’ PDC with relevant knowledge and skills for their future careers. Similar to previous studies of TEDs and schoolteachers, the focus is often on source criticism (Örtegren, 2022; Vajen et al., 2023). This is not surprising, given its role in social science education, but it represents only one aspect of digital citizenship. Viewed through a postdigital lens, this focus may result in failure to address important implications of socio-technical environments for digital citizenship. Young people could become ill-prepared to engage critically with increasingly important phenomena like algorithms and artificial intelligence (Hintz et al., 2019; Vuorikari et al., 2022).

The evolving socio-technical environments of digital citizenship also highlight needs for responsiveness of social science TE (cf. Sandahl, 2018) and PDC to support TEDs in their dual-didactic task. TEDs expressed how they are expected to be responsive to rapid societal changes, like democratic implications of digital technologies, but with little professional development. TEIs need to offer TEDs opportunities to develop PDC beyond instrumental approaches and everyday knowledge, including a broad conceptual understanding of digital citizenship integrated with other approaches to citizenship (Cervera & Caena, 2022; Vajen et al., 2023). That way, digital citizenship does not become ‘yet another thing to cover’ in already busy schedules. Such integration also aligns with a postdigital lens, recognising that digital technologies in education and society are part of much larger ecosystems. Hence, TEDs’ PDC is not strictly ‘digital’ but entangled with broader societal issues, e.g. social justice, democracy, and sustainability (Jandrić & Ford, 2022; Markauskaite et al., 2023; cf. Örtegren, 2024b). This reflects previous calls for integrating aspects of digital citizenship throughout TE (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020; Örtegren, 2022), including TEDs in our study.

Moreover, our paper highlights a need to consider TEDs’ development of relevant PDC (Instefjord & Munthe, 2017; Lindfors et al., 2021) together with their personal trajectories (Choi et al., 2018). Viewed through a postdigital lens, the results highlight specifically the importance of considering socio-technical views (Tondeur et al., 2019; Uerz et al., 2018; cf. Örtegren, 2024a) and relevant PDC for TEDs’ dual-didactic task in teaching for digital citizenship, for example when planning professional development activities.

Also important is the tendency of participating TEDs to link digital citizenship to first-order teaching of subject content, which may influence organisational and personal conditions. As illustrated by our paper, TEDs may think that they have PDC to teach about digital citizenship, like artificial intelligence in society, and that such teaching is part of their role in social science TE. However, they seem less sure about PDC specific to their dual-didactic task, i.e. teaching student teachers how to teach about artificial intelligence in society (cf. Lindfors & Olofsson, 2023; Uerz et al., 2018).

Through a postdigital lens, TEDs’ dual-didactic task supported by PDC is further complicated by being in constant flux, due to the evolving socio-technical environments of digital citizenship (cf. Hintz et al., 2019; Markauskaite et al., 2023; Örtegren, 2022). Here, our paper highlights the importance of a didactics grounded in the present and in motion, holistically considering how everyday knowledge and subject content related to digital citizenship link to teaching for democracy towards not-yetness (Ross, 2017). Therefore, TEDs’ PDC needs to develop over time (cf. Skantz-Åberg et al., 2022; Willermark et al., 2023), including their profession-specific understanding of digital citizenship (Örtegren, 2022; Vajen et al., 2023).

With potentially paradoxical results, the ways TEDs approach their dual-didactic task (Lindfors et al., 2021; Uerz et al., 2018) may impact the reportedly important development of student teachers’ PDC to teach for digital citizenship. For example, several TEDs demonstrated a broad—possibly postdigital—understanding of how digital technologies are entangled with democracy but embraced a narrow understanding of digital citizenship in teaching and learning, or that such teaching, while important, is someone else’s responsibility. To ensure opportunities for student teachers to develop relevant PDC, programme reviews could therefore be a way forward.

Social science TE also intersects many disciplines with their own traditions and subject conceptions (Barton & Avery, 2016; Johansson, 2017). This may add important context to the fragmentation in TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship and their dual-didactic task, with challenges for program cohesion, for instance in TEDs’ ability to grasp contributions of different disciplines, in both Sweden (Swedish Higher Education Authority, 2020) and other countries where social science TE has a multidisciplinary character. This could explain why many participating TEDs rely on colleagues, programme directors, and practicum supervisors to ensure that digital citizenship is addressed, which indicates a need for stronger policies to promote consistency across TEIs (cf. Lindfors et al., 2021; Örtegren, 2022), even if our results show that such support is generally undesirable.

In conclusion, this paper contributes knowledge of how TEDs, as street-level bureaucrats, navigate the space between written and performed education policy in ways that will inevitably influence pupils’ opportunities to develop digital citizenship and competence. Our results show how the responsiveness to societal changes of social science TE places substantial demands on TEDs’ PDC to teach for digital citizenship. Hence, TEIs must offer TEDs relevant support and strive to integrate content so that digital citizenship becomes embedded with other approaches to citizenship.

Although this paper provides insights into TEDs’ views of teaching for digital citizenship in social science TE, it does not allow conclusions regarding TED’s enacted teaching for digital citizenship. The conditions that may influence such enactment in other geographical contexts also warrant attention, as they may vary. Another limitation is that our study did not include all Swedish TEIs, or therefore cover the full potential variation in TEDs’ views of digital citizenship. Mixed-method or large-scale quantitative studies could expand our qualitative conclusions, e.g. by examining TEDs’ and student teachers’ views of digital citizenship and related PDC (cf. Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020; Örtegren, 2022) with cross-national comparisons (Vajen et al., 2023). Furthermore, as our participating TEDs indicated a need for professional development focused on PDC to teach for digital citizenship, educational design research could provide further insights, with collaborative efforts of TED teams (Lantz-Andersson et al., 2022).

Lastly, to be responsive to societal changes, social science education may require, perhaps more than other school subjects, PDC with substantial degrees of plasticity and temporality (cf. Almås et al., 2021; Olofsson et al., 2021). For example, the prominence of source criticism in social science education has not faded, while datafication increasingly poses demands on the digital competence young people need and therefore the PDC of TEDs and schoolteachers. As highlighted in this paper, these continuities and ruptures in what skills and knowledge young people need to develop in schools necessitate responsive PDC in social science education. This is crucial to meet the broader educational goal of fostering democratic citizens, where an important part is young people’s digital citizenship and digital competence to act as members of society in evolving socio-technical environments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [No. 2019-03607].

Notes on contributors

Alex Örtegren

Alex Örtegren is a teacher educator and a PhD student in Educational work at Umeå University. His research interests include teacher education, digital competence, and democratic education.

Anders D. Olofsson

Anders D. Olofsson is a Professor of Education at Umeå University and a guest professor of Education at Gothenburg University. His research focuses on the digitalisation of K-12 schools and teacher education as well as professional digital competence in educational practices.

Notes

1. The authors conducted this study in the spring of 2022. New curricular revisions came into effect in the autumn of the same year, hence the previous national curriculum (of 2018) is cited in this paper.

2. Length and structure distinguish social science TE from the related school subject for younger pupils—civics—which combines studies in social science, geography, history, and religion, and thus is part of a separate TE program.