Purpose

This study examines whether online asynchronous discussion forums support student’s meaning-making about citizenship in a globalizing world. Citizenship is an increasingly contested identity for young people, yet they have few opportunities in traditional civic education to consider their own citizenship. Although online discussions are considered effective spaces for increasing dialogue and critical thinking between diverse students, there has been little research to understand how effective they are for helping students to construct new understandings of citizenship.

Design/methodology/approach

A content analysis approach was used to analyze and code 89 discussion board posts. The Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) coding scheme was used to describe and analyze the quality of knowledge construction that occurred across the posts focusing on different aspects of global citizenship.

Findings

The findings demonstrate that the discussion boards produced substantive talks about the meaning of citizenship that in some instances reached the level of new knowledge construction. The students considered different meanings for global citizenship and negotiated positions on key issues. However, the highest levels of knowledge construction were rarely reached.

Practical implications

A major implication is the need to organize and cue discussion boards to support knowledge construction in addition to fostering dialogue.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the role that technology can play in supporting students’ knowledge construction about global citizenship that go beyond the scripted meanings conveyed in civics classes.

中文翻译：

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创造数字公民：在线讨论中学生对全球公民意义的共建

目的

本研究检验在线异步讨论论坛是否支持学生在全球化世界中对公民身份的意义建构。对于年轻人来说，公民身份是一个越来越有争议的身份，但他们在传统的公民教育中几乎没有机会考虑自己的公民身份。尽管在线讨论被认为是增加不同学生之间对话和批判性思维的有效空间，但很少有研究了解它们在帮助学生建立对公民身份的新理解方面的有效性。

设计/方法/方法

使用内容分析方法对 89 个讨论区帖子进行分析和编码。交互分析模型 (IAM) 编码方案用于描述和分析在关注全球公民不同方面的帖子中发生的知识构建质量。

发现

研究结果表明，讨论板产生了关于公民意义的实质性讨论，在某些情况下达到了新知识构建的水平。学生们考虑了全球公民的不同含义，并就关键问题协商了立场。然而，知识建构的最高水平却很少达到。

实际影响

一个主要的含义是除了促进对话之外，还需要组织和提示讨论板以支持知识构建。

原创性/价值

这项研究有助于技术在支持学生构建全球公民知识方面发挥的作用，这些知识超越了公民课程中传达的脚本含义。