Defining Digital Fluency
The Challenge of Digital Literacy - Beyond Narrow Skills to Critical Mindsets
How might we reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to reshape our societies for new ways of living, learning and working for a better future—for all?
Digital literacies have relatively little to do with mastering specific keystrokes and raise bigger questions about what it means to be an educated person in the 21st Century.
Digital literacy - three different models:
Universal Literacy, Creative Literacy and Literacy Across Disciplines
The European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (Vuorikari, Punie, Carretero Gomez, & Van den Brande, 2016). In 2017, the updated version of this framework, known as DigComp 2.1 (see Figure 4), identifies five key components of digital competence—information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving— with 21 related competences and eight proficiency levels (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017).
The ‘Digital society needs digitally-competent citizens’. In this context, according to the infographic, being digitally competent is taken to mean:
The wider socio-political context is crucial to defining and understanding digital literacies, and the much wider concept of critical citizenry in the digital-era. Such a conception of citizenship encompasses an understanding that our own appetite for, and uncritical consumption of, new digital technology as part of the life those of us living in the developed world have become accustom to is at the root of many of our problems, including the grand challenges of globalisation, climate change and an increasingly unsustainable planet. Therefore, learning when not to use, replace or update technology needs to be an important part of critical digital citizenship for the future.
Anchored in UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG4) to ‘Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’, the report identifies three broad but distinct areas of digital skills for life and work:
The above points are reflected in Doug Belshaw’s (2015) eight essential elements of digital literacies —culture, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical and civic— as they attempt to encapsulate both a strong critical and contextual flavour... that explicitly recognises the importance of learning how to use digital technologies for public engagement, global citizenship and the enhancement of democracy —for better lives and more sustainable futures.
How might we reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to reshape our societies for new ways of living, learning and working for a better future—for all?
Digital literacies have relatively little to do with mastering specific keystrokes and raise bigger questions about what it means to be an educated person in the 21st Century.
Digital literacy - three different models:
Universal Literacy, Creative Literacy and Literacy Across Disciplines
- Universal literacy involves inculcating a critical stance towards the increasingly immersive
- world of digital technologies
- Creative literacies encapsulate the producer side of the producer-consumer continuum
- Literacy and Literacy Across Disciplines focuses on curricular infusion across the disciplines
The European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (Vuorikari, Punie, Carretero Gomez, & Van den Brande, 2016). In 2017, the updated version of this framework, known as DigComp 2.1 (see Figure 4), identifies five key components of digital competence—information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving— with 21 related competences and eight proficiency levels (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017).
The ‘Digital society needs digitally-competent citizens’. In this context, according to the infographic, being digitally competent is taken to mean:
- Using digital technologies in a confident and safe way for various purposes such as working, getting a job, learning, shopping online, obtaining health information, being included and participating in society, entertainment, etc. (P.2).
- tools and technologies
- find and use
- communicate and collaborate
- teach and learn
- create and innovate
- identity and wellbeing
The wider socio-political context is crucial to defining and understanding digital literacies, and the much wider concept of critical citizenry in the digital-era. Such a conception of citizenship encompasses an understanding that our own appetite for, and uncritical consumption of, new digital technology as part of the life those of us living in the developed world have become accustom to is at the root of many of our problems, including the grand challenges of globalisation, climate change and an increasingly unsustainable planet. Therefore, learning when not to use, replace or update technology needs to be an important part of critical digital citizenship for the future.
Anchored in UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG4) to ‘Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’, the report identifies three broad but distinct areas of digital skills for life and work:
- Basic functional digital skills for accessing and engaging with digital technologies
- Generic digital skills for using digital technologies in meaningful and beneficial ways
- Higher-level skills for using digital technology in empowering and transformative ways.
- A set of specific understandings and a disposition towards the politics of the digital society and
- digital economy. This foregrounds the ability of individuals to analyse the political features of digital technology and manipulate these to achieve particular outcomes. In this sense, it is argued that individuals need to be able to recognise the motivations of actors in the digital spaces (Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, 2017a, p.32).
The above points are reflected in Doug Belshaw’s (2015) eight essential elements of digital literacies —culture, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical and civic— as they attempt to encapsulate both a strong critical and contextual flavour... that explicitly recognises the importance of learning how to use digital technologies for public engagement, global citizenship and the enhancement of democracy —for better lives and more sustainable futures.
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With the notable exception of the European DigComp project, very few frameworks for digital literacies explicitly document and report the methodologies they adopt in their development process, and how they sought to address the question of trustworthiness–that is, reliability (i.e., does everyone agree and consistently assign specific digital skills and competencies to the same proposed category?); and validity (i.e., do proposed categories for digital literacies and related skills truly reflect the concept?). In other words can we trust the particular representation of digital literacies, especially since there are so many competing models and frameworks?
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From a pedagogical perspective, moreover, there is a danger of promoting narrow instrumentalist approaches to digital skills development, as evidenced by the growing trend to map and issue digital badges for completion of specific competencies.
In so doing there is a risk of reifying the validity of the specific framework without inviting critique of underlying assumptions. Arguably, one of the takeaway lessons from the latest UNESCO report is that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts in efforts to cultivate and support critical digital mindsets.
Efforts to foster digital mindsets and promote critical conceptions of digital literacies need to strike a balance between a focus on the development of important skills for today anchored in the language of opportunity and deeper levels of critique framed in the longer-term mission of promoting access, equity and education for all. Such critique needs to go beyond a focus on individuals developing their digital identity, safety and wellbeing by helping to unravel some of the entangled arguments and competing macro-level discourses often imbued in the language of globalisation, neo-liberalism, and technological determinism. From this critical transformative perspective the goal of developing digital literacies is inextricably linked to enabling a greater sense of both personal and collective agency to help address some of the bigger issues confronting the future of humanity in an uncertain world.
How might we reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to reshape our societies for new ways of living, learning and working for a better future—for all?
Finally, we should heed the salient advice of George Bernard Shaw—the great Irish critic, playwright and polemicist:
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
In so doing there is a risk of reifying the validity of the specific framework without inviting critique of underlying assumptions. Arguably, one of the takeaway lessons from the latest UNESCO report is that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts in efforts to cultivate and support critical digital mindsets.
Efforts to foster digital mindsets and promote critical conceptions of digital literacies need to strike a balance between a focus on the development of important skills for today anchored in the language of opportunity and deeper levels of critique framed in the longer-term mission of promoting access, equity and education for all. Such critique needs to go beyond a focus on individuals developing their digital identity, safety and wellbeing by helping to unravel some of the entangled arguments and competing macro-level discourses often imbued in the language of globalisation, neo-liberalism, and technological determinism. From this critical transformative perspective the goal of developing digital literacies is inextricably linked to enabling a greater sense of both personal and collective agency to help address some of the bigger issues confronting the future of humanity in an uncertain world.
How might we reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to reshape our societies for new ways of living, learning and working for a better future—for all?
Finally, we should heed the salient advice of George Bernard Shaw—the great Irish critic, playwright and polemicist:
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
