Digital Citizenship Education In The First Cycle Of Education. First Results Of A Collaborative Research In Lombardy And Molise (Italy)

Digital Citizenship Education is part of Civic Education consolidating the role of schools to promote the education of citizens. Acquiring digital skills in today’s society is a key element, emphasizing the importance of considering technologies as subject of reflection and not only educational tools. The aim is to help students to develop a critical mindset, responsibility and ethical awareness, elements on which media education insists from the beginning. Since the school year 2018-19, CREMIT (Research Center about Media Education, Innovation and Technology) of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and University of Molise are leading a research project to design vertical curricula (from preprimary to lower secondary education) for the development of media skills. 14 schools in Lombardy and 5 schools in Molise were chosen on the basis of the significance of past experiences in the field of media education and in order to represent all the provinces of the two Italian regions. The research project is structured as follows: a first year for designing the curriculum and a second year for experimenting paths of Digital Citizenship Education, in line with the indications of the Italian Syllabus of Digital Civic Education. The aim is to design, experiment, document and disseminate educational solutions, organized in vertical curricula, aimed at developing digital civic competences in students.