Conference Program

The PhD research project, “Digital Citizenship at School: a Digital Civic Education Curriculum for Upper Secondary Education”, aims to develop an evidence-based digital civic education curriculum inspired by Media Literacy Education. The project includes the design of a curriculum prototype to be tested through a research-action approach.

The introduction of Civic Education as a cross-curricular subject (Law 92/2019) and the Guidelines (MIM 2024) have raised a clear challenge for schools.

Civic Education can serve as a testing ground for transforming knowledge into consistent everyday behavior, and it is essential to develop students' ability to become conscious and active citizens in the digital ecosystem. This means going beyond the mere consumption of information and providing students with the tools to critically analyse the mechanisms that govern contemporary communication. From a media education perspective, students will have the opportunity to decipher hidden processes and learn to recognize how platforms can influence their perception of reality and their opinion on social facts and issues. They will also be equipped to unmask attempts at disinformation and distorted narratives that jeopardize public debate and the very foundations of democratic coexistence.

At the same time, students’ everyday lives increasingly take place in an “onlife” context (Floridi, 2019), where digital and offline experiences are deeply intertwined. Yet Civic Education often fails to reflect this reality.

More specifically, schools still struggle to meaningfully integrate a Media Education (ME) perspective into Civic Education. Digital issues are often addressed through a mainly technical or instrumental approach, rather than through a critical and reflective one that supports students’ digital well-being.

The main research question is how can a Civic Education curriculum informed by Media Education be designed to respond to students’ needs within the complexity of the contemporary, onlife world?

The research project aims to design, test and validate a Civic Education curriculum model inspired by a Media Education perspective, conceived as replicable and scalable. The objective is to foster in students an active, aware and responsible digital citizenship, especially regarding the issue of online disinformation.

The research is carried out in two highly differentiated school contexts (a classical high school and a technical/vocational institute in Palermo), in order to assess its effectiveness and adaptability of the model. The study analyses the impact of the educational pathway on students by assessing the development of digital citizenship competences, critical thinking, awareness of digital well-being, and the ability to produce responsible media content. The research project also includes an exploratory analysis, conducted through interviews and focus groups with policymakers, of school policies related to Civic Education and digital citizenship, in order to assess their alignment with the needs and realities of educational practice.

The project offers an opportunity to adopt a Media Education approach for the construction and development of students' media literacy, particularly with regard to the issue of disinformation (Cappello & Rizzuto, 2025). At the Fourth International Conference of Scuola Democratica, the initial research findings based on the experimentation conducted with students in February and March 2026 will be presented.