Search Results (37)

The adoption of e-government services in Small Island Developing Nations (SIDNs) aims to enhance public service efficiency, inclusiveness, and quality. However, e-government service development in SIDNs faces some significant constraints, including limited resources, geographical isolation, low digital literacy levels, and inadequate technological infrastructure. This study investigates value co-creation approaches in e-government service, aiming to identify specific value co-creation processes and methods to support sustainable e-government initiatives in SIDN settings. The study applies a qualitative approach; based on the thematic analysis of interviews with government stakeholders, it identifies contextual factors and conditions that influence e-government value co-creation processes in SIDNs and strategies for sustainable e-government service value co-creation. This study contributes a value co-creation framework that applies participatory design, agile development, collaborative governance, socio-technical thinking, and technology adaptation as methods for the design and implementation of flexible and inclusive e-government services that are responsive to local needs, resilient to challenges, and sustainable over time. The framework can be used by policymakers and practitioners to facilitate sustainable digital transformation in SIDNs through collaborative governance, active participation, and civic engagement with innovative technologies. Full article

This paper examines how Marley Dias’ activism on Instagram promotes racial justice, Black feminist thought, and youth mobilization through digital storytelling, representation, and audience engagement. Using a mixed-methods analysis of 744 posts published between 2016 and 2025, the study combined critical thematic coding, temporal mapping, and engagement metrics to analyze the discursive and emotional strategies behind Dias’ activism. Five key themes were identified as central to her activist work: diversity in literature, lack girl empowerment, racial justice, Black representation, and educational advocacy. The findings reveal that Dias strategically tailors her messages to suit Instagram’s unique features, using carousels and videos to enhance visibility, foster intimacy, and provide depth in education. Posts that focused on identity, aesthetics, and empowerment garnered the highest levels of engagement, while posts that concentrated on structural issues received lower, yet still significant, interaction. The paper argues that Dias’ Instagram account serves as a dynamic platform for youth-led Black feminist resistance, where cultural production, civic education, and emotional impact converge. This case underscores the political potential of digital literacies and encourages a reconsideration of how youth-driven digital activism is reshaping contemporary public discourse, agency, and knowledge production in the social media age. Full article

Drawing from the insights of community partners, this study explored the roles and benefits of arts-based approaches to foster civic learning, critical media literacy, and community engagement. It also uncovered approaches to promote kindness, prevent violence, and combat online extremism, offering insights into strategies that may enhance community engagement and create a positive impact. We presented our model framework, a detailed case study of our project, and qualitative methods incorporating 15 interviews with our community partners to capture a broad range of perspectives and experiences. Interviewees were community partners who collaborated with our project in organizing events and activities using an arts-based approach to promote kindness, awareness, and violence prevention since the inception of the project. Data were analyzed using thematic data analysis. We categorized the community partners’ responses into four key themes: (1) the inherent benefits of the arts, (2) promoting kindness and preventing violence through artistic expression, (3) teaching civic responsibility through the arts, and (4) practical strategies for collaborating with community partners. The practice implications and lessons learned were discussed. Full article

The issue of environmental protection and nature conservation has gained global importance, and its solution requires not only scientific and technological efforts but also the education of an environmentally conscious and active young generation. Children’s literature serves as an effective means for this task. The article analyzes the eco-pedagogical potential of contemporary Ukrainian children’s literature through the prism of young eco-rebels. These characters inspire readers with their emotional power, eco-centric worldview, and bold resistance to environmental injustice. They contribute to the formation of ecological values in readers through emotional impact. Based on the ecocritical interpretation and typological comparison of Ghosts of Black Oak Wood by Bachynskyi and Taming of Kychera by Polyanko, we observe that the components of representation of the ecological topic are problematic eco-situation; behavior models, young eco-rebels’ actions and deeds; and eco-initiatives. The article further presents the results of ecocritical dialogues on environmental topics with 26 readers aged 14–15 (Ukraine). The methodology included interactive tools (e.g., Padlet) and surveys, which revealed that literary engagement promoted critical thinking, empathy, and personal eco-involvement. The findings confirm that children’s literature, when integrated with dialogic and participatory teaching methods, can serve as a powerful tool for shaping environmental literacy and civic responsibility in youth. Full article

Civic intelligence (CI) represents the collective capacity of communities to address challenges, yet its integration with smart city infrastructure remains limited. This study bridges CI theory with technical implementation through a novel framework combining blockchain and AI technologies. Our approach maps core CI components (knowledge capital, system capital, and relational capital) to specific technical solutions: a civic engagement index for measuring participation quality, a tokenization framework for incentivizing meaningful engagement, and a governance optimization function for resource allocation. Using mixed-methods research, we developed and validated the conceptual CI governance (CIG) framework, which satisfies CI principles through smart contracts and AI-assisted interfaces. The empirical evaluation demonstrates both social and technical improvements: 40% increased civic participation rates, 85% governance efficiency maintenance, and significant gains in engagement quality metrics (knowledge sharing +32%, collective decision making +28%). While technical implementation shows promise, success requires the careful integration of social dynamics, digital literacy initiatives, and regulatory compliance. This research contributes to smart city development by providing a theoretically grounded, feasible framework that introduces the fusion of blockchain and AI technologies to enhance civic participation while preserving governance effectiveness. Full article

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to combat poverty, inequality, and climate change. Recently, integrating these goals into higher education curricula has emerged as essential for fostering positive environmental and civic engagement. Challenges persist, particularly the prioritization of social and economic concerns over eco-centered principles and ecopedagogy. Education must emphasize the politics of environmental issues, advocating sustainable practices that benefit both humans and nonhuman species. This article proposes ten simple rules for incorporating the SDGs into undergraduate courses in ecology, evolution, and environmental science. We conducted a literature review, analyzing 940 publications from 2014 to 2024 using ISI Web of Science and Google Scholar. We focused on fields like Green Sustainable Science and Technology and Environmental Education to identify the best practices for integrating SDGs. Our findings link pedagogical successes to the SDGs, facilitating effective educational strategies. For practical sustainability education, students must grasp the interplay between the environment and societal elements such as diversity, justice, and resilience. Connecting course topics to the SDGs offers a powerful framework for teaching undergraduates about complex environmental challenges. Our research highlights a novel approach to embedding SDGs in environmental education, promoting critical thinking and literacy across various settings. Full article

This article explores Quebec’s recent transition from the “Ethics and Religious Culture” (ERC) program to the “Culture and Citizenship in Quebec” (CCQ) program, emphasizing the role of religious literacy in secular societies. We investigate the rationale behind the shift, and examine the ERC’s focus on fostering understanding of diverse religious and ethical perspectives as well as CCQ’s broader mandate to integrate cultural and civic education and its aim at the development of a shared and common public Quebecois culture. The case study highlights the pedagogical and societal implications of this change, discussing how the CCQ program aims to enhance civic engagement, cultural awareness, and social cohesion. Furthermore, the article identifies opportunities for educators to address pressing global challenges, such as polarization, reconciliation, and the climate crisis, within the new curriculum framework. By promoting critical thinking, inclusivity, and active citizenship, fostering religious literacy in such programs presents a unique opportunity for educators and youth to contribute to a more resilient and harmonious society. Full article

The aim of this study is to explore civic literacy as an approach to counter disinformation in democracies. From group interviews, we elicit, categorize, and analyze diverse perspectives on disinformation in Sweden, previously upheld as a country with high civic literacy levels. We focus on people’s understandings of disinformation, their assessment of their own abilities to discern disinformation, and their ideas about how increased resilience to disinformation could be achieved. Our findings, based on input from 73 interviewees across Sweden, suggest that shared basic knowledge on disinformation is lacking. Moreover, there is a related weak understanding of what constitutes authentic information. Those with low awareness operate on a logic of beliefs, implying that measures to improve factuality and objectivity could not even be aspired for. Still, there are also constituents showing advanced understandings. The majority of respondents call for new measures to strengthen citizen knowledge and skills and generate many proposals to that end. Our results indicate that citizen competence needs to increase considerably to keep up with the rapidly evolving disinformation environment. A concerted drive to boost citizen knowledge and skills, tailored to different constituencies, is needed for the democratic system to work as intended. Full article

This article considers how Montesquieu’s theoretical response to his perceived dangers of modern commerce may guide us on teaching citizenship in higher learning today. I argue that a Montesquieu informed framework for civic learning, which primarily stresses a careful study of the nation’s existing constitutional and positive laws, would (1) entail a baseline level of scientific and economic literacy to deepen our understanding of how commercial modernity’s most recent innovations may undermine the authority of those laws if left unchecked, and (2) cultivate an appreciation for the laws, mores, institutions, and practices that some of these same innovations threaten to dissolve if left unchecked. The article concludes with practical recommendations on how to cultivate resilient future custodians of our self-governing republic. I contend that universities need to provide a learning environment that inspires students to crave different kinds of success or recognition, distinctly highlighting the need for heavy restrictions on the use of electronics in the classroom. I then propose that civics-focused curricula must ensure that students are furnished with the requisite technocratic expertise to (1) recognize how their daily economic decisions as private citizens will impact the public interest and (2) exercise prudent judgment over future legislation aiming to safeguard individual liberties within a techno-mediated twenty-first century commercial world. Full article

Promoting environmental citizenship can be a strong positive force toward addressing our current environmental issues. Informed individuals that act in pro-environmental ways both publicly and privately, as well as engage in civic action aimed at addressing environmental issues, are a substantial force for positive change. However, there is a well-known political divide between the political left and political right, where left-leaning individuals tend to engage more in environmental action that right-leaning individuals. The present study explores whether environmental education and environmental literacy might hold the key for right-wing participation in environmental citizenship. A representative sample of 700 Lithuanian emerging adults (20–39 years of age, mean age 30.6 years, 50% female) was used in the present study. Participants filled in measures of their political orientation, environmental citizenship, environmental literacy, and environmental (self-)education. The results showed that, as expected, left-leaning views were positively associated with environmental citizenship, but when interactions between political orientation and environmental literacy as well as environmental (self-)education were introduced, right-leaning views tended to increase the association between environmental citizenship and environmental literacy as well as environmental (self-)education. The results show a promising outlook toward using quality education to promote environmental citizenship among right-leaning individuals. Full article

We investigated the relationship between the personal backgrounds, learning experiences, and learning outcomes of college students serving as student association cadres by applying the indicators of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) in the United States. The participants of this study were students at the university student associations in Taiwan, and the sampling was carried out through purposeful sampling. We distributed 1850 questionnaires, and 1761 valid questionnaires were received with a recovery rate of 95%. The self-assessed learning outcomes of the student association cadres were good. Among them, “integration and speculation of cognition” was the highest, followed by “integration and application of knowledge”, “inner self-development”, “interpersonal interaction ability”, “practice ability”, and “social care and civic literacy”. The self-assessment of the student association cadres in their learning experience was also positive. Among them, “experience in engagement” was the highest, followed by “experience in management”, “experience in handling activities”, and “experience in training courses”; while “experience in participating in activities” was the lowest. Through a hierarchical linear regression analysis of the American CAS learning outcome indicator, the student association cadres’ personal background and learning experience had significant explanatory power. The R-squared value of each aspect ranged from 39.6% to 61.1%. It was obvious that the American CAS indicator could be used to examine the learning outcomes of higher education student associations in Taiwan. The results confirm that studying student associations could become an essential approach for cultivating students’ learning outcomes and become an essential reference for Taiwan’s universities and colleges to promote community education. Full article

A recurring motif in recent scholarship in the computing ethics and society studies (CESS) subfield within computing have been the calls for a wider recognition of the social and political nature of computing work. These calls have highlighted the limitations of an ethics-only approach to covering social and political topics such as bias, fairness, equality, and justice within computing curricula. However, given the technically focused background of most computing educators, it is not necessarily clear how political topics should best be addressed in computing courses. This paper proposes that one helpful way to do so is via the well-established pedagogy of citizenship education, and as such it endeavors to introduce the discourse of citizenship education to an audience of computing educators. In particular, the change within citizenship education away from its early focus on personal responsibility and duty to its current twin focus on engendering civic participation in one’s community along with catalyzing critical attitudes to the realities of today’s social, political, and technical worlds, is especially relevant to computing educators in light of computing’s new-found interest in the political education of its students. Related work in digital literacy education is also discussed. Full article

In this paper, we put forward a proposal for the design and the evaluation of teaching–learning sequences (TLSs) on the greenhouse effect (GHE), relying on the educational reconstruction model (MER). The first design, which starts from a critical analysis of textbook treatments of the GHE, is followed by a cyclic, recursive process, which consists of theoretical reflection, conceptual analysis, design, and test of a sequence. At each iteration, the analysis of the students’ learning progression provided relevant information for addressing the persistent hurdles and misunderstandings that affect it. Our findings show how design choices can support the learning of the GHE, leading to the formulation of design principles that help foster understanding. The iterative approach strongly improved the design and evaluation and allowed for a significant refinement of the TLSs. The implementation and evaluation process, which went on from 2017 to 2021, involved undergraduate students attending a course on “experimental physics laboratory” at the University of Trento in those years. The results indicate that, in the end, students can reach an effective understanding of the physical grounds of the GHE. Full article

In much of the world, education, nursing, and social work are human-centred professions that aim to engage with individuals holistically. Yet, how much of their training prepares them for this manifold reality? In this article, we provide an overview of three Canadian societal contexts, examine the literature on religious literacy in higher education and in the Canadian context, and study the professional programs of education, nursing, and social work offered in the top-ranked universities in the three largest English-speaking provinces in Canada. We describe the incorporation of the Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the limited evidence of religious literacy evident in the online information provided about the chosen programs and then argue that religious literacy is a necessary component of the university preparation programs for those entering these human-centred professions. Student requests for religious literacy workshops provided by the Centre for Civic Religious Literacy (CCRL), a non-religious and non-profit organization that works with partners in communities across Canada, demonstrate a demand for such education. Full article