Digital storytelling for global citizenship education: a Chinese case study

ABSTRACT

Adopting Oxfam’s key elements of education for global citizenship, this case study investigates how digital storytelling, a participatory media practice, is used for citizenship education among Chinese college students. A thematic analysis of in-depth interviews suggests digital storytelling can be used as an effective pedagogical tool as students report multifaceted development in knowledge, skills and values outlined in the curriculum for global citizenship education. Instead of taking an approach focusing only on Western values, the researcher emphasizes the use of local agendas and taking local contexts into consideration while integrating information and communication technologies for global citizenship education. The findings show that professional tools and tutorial are helpful and welcomed but not a must-have, which indicates promoting global citizenship education through digital storytelling is practically feasible in the Global South whose voices should be heard and values known in a globalized world. This study adds literature on global citizen education in China which is under-researched compared to more developed Asian economies.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital storytelling
• participatory culture
• global citizenship education
• ICTs
• China

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. To avoid redundancy, details of Oxfam’s elements are presented in Table 2.

2. For instance, Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies offers a Certificate in Social Impact Storytelling. School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri provides an interdisciplinary BA and a minor in Digital Storytelling.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [18BXW113].

Notes on contributors

Tao Fu

Tao Fu is Associate Professor of international communication. She obtained her PhD from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her research interests focus on information and communication technologies and social change.