This article reviews literature on videoconferencing for global citizenship education and analyzes those efforts towards cosmopolitan citizenship

Carano, Kenneth T.

Krutka, Daniel G.

Videoconferencing activities hold particular promise for social studies educators hoping to mediate

humanizing experiences that will help students grow as citizens of the world. In this paper, we review literature on

videoconferencing for global citizenship education and analyze those efforts towards cosmopolitan citizenship.

Through our analysis of scholarly, popular, and practitioner sources, we present three general, and often overlapping,

purposes for videoconferencing -- intercultural experiences, intercultural projects, and learning about cultures -- while

providing a variety of examples and options from elementary to higher education. Educators encourage intercultural

experiences when the primary purpose for participants’ videoconferencing activities is to learn about the people,

communities, and cultures with whom they engage. The primary aim of intercultural projects is for participants to

utilize videoconferencing to complete some task together. Educators can help students learn about cultures by bringing

in people from different countries or cultures to share their expert knowledge or perspectives. We hope educators can

glean insights from the videoconferencing cases provided in the text so as to make decision appropriate to their unique

students’ needs. None of these approaches is necessarily superior to the others, but they may require different time

and energy commitments. We also share technology requirements and common problems with videoconferencing.

Finally, we conclude with implications for educators and researcher

Daniel G. Krutka

Videoconferencing for Global Citizenship Education: Wise Practices for Social Studies Educators

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Directory of Open Access Journals

UNT Digital Library