Italian Journal of Sociology of Education 

About: Italian Journal of Sociology of Education is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Lifelong learning & Higher education. It has an ISSN identifier of 2035-4983. Over the lifetime, 388 publications have been published receiving 2279 citations.

Developing Digital Skills and Competences: A Quick-Scan Analysis of 13 Digital Literacy Models

Abstract: The development of digital literacy has become a key element on the agenda of scholars, practitioners and policymakers worldwide. To this end, actors in the field often make use of conceptual models on digital literacy. As these models inevitably play a role in shaping the public debate on digital literacy, it is important to gain insights into the concepts and ideas they put forward. This article aims to: (1) unravel the complexity and diversity of concepts regarding digital skills, literacies and competences; (2) identify the concepts promoted in 13 selected models on digital literacy; and subsequently (3) analyse the concepts that shape and/or dominate the scholarly and public debate on digital literacy. The results of this article are based on a literature review and quick-scan analysis of 13 digital literacy models that have been published and used by actors in the field between 2004-2014. The frameworks were mapped in a matrix and compared on the basis of 39 indicators, clustered in five categories: operational, technical and formal; information, cognition; digital communication; digital content creation; and strategic. The results of the analysis point towards an unbalanced focus on certain skills and competences, with particular emphasis on a series of operational, information-searching, and communication skills.

Educational Policy in Nigeria from the Colonial Era to the Post-Independence Period

Abstract: There is a widened western educational gap between the north and south of Nigeria with the predominantly Muslim areas of the north lagging behind due to some historical antecedents. In the colonial era the British educational policy did not address the aspirations of the people leading to a clamour for change in the post-independence era resulting in the first indigenous National Policy on Education in 1977. Changes have resulted in three revised editions of the national educational policy. This paper reviews the educational policy in the Federal Republic of Nigeria since 1944, highlighting specific issues on the disparity between educational policy and the implementation in context of the wider socio-economic and political development process. This is a case study of the peculiarity of educational policy development in a pluralistic society and developing country, with unity and developmental concerns.

“Digital Well-Being”. Developing a New Theoretical Tool For Media Literacy Research

Abstract: In this paper we show that a new problem is arising for users of digital media, who deal with an overabundant flow of information and social relationship options throughout the day. They increasingly need specific skills to channel digital stimuli towards personal goals and benefit, avoiding excessive multi-tasking, fragmentation of daily time and overconsumption of new media. We argue that these side effects are starting to represent a menace for people’s well-being. We show that existing frameworks of digital skills do not explicitly consider abilities to cope with communication overabundance. We also recognise that this question is not merely one of individual skills since the use of digital media is framed within social norms and expectations about what is “good” in the digital environment. Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of literature on the concept of “well-being”, we offer a definition of “digital well-being” as a state obtainable not only by the individual through his/her personal “digital well-being skills”, but also as a characteristic of a community whose norms, values and expectations contribute to its members’ comfort, safety, satisfaction and fulfilment. In the concluding section, we show the fruitfulness of the concepts of “digital well-being” and “digital well-being skills” for interdisciplinary social research and policy.

Character Education: Themes and Researches. An Academic Literature Review

Abstract: Character education is both a rooted and developing discipline. Even though there is no consensual definition, it can be widely described as a school- based process to promote personal development in youth, through the development of virtue, moral values, and moral agency. Starting from the growing interest about this theme in recent years, this article aims at using the "character education" analysis category to conduct an exploratory research on the main tendencies in the international literature, defining which are the main topics, exploring the way these topics develop in terms of theory and empirical research and analyzing how they relate to each other. In view of this goal, titles and abstracts of 261 articles published in 145 peer-reviewed academic journals over the period 2005-2014 were selected from Education Source, ERIC, Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection and SocINDEX databases. Articles' titles and abstract were analyzed through the T-Lab software, using different content analysis techniques. Although many ambivalences and ambiguities affect the meaning attributed to the character education, some key trends emerge from this literature review and the considered studies seem to agree that character education can play an important role in the construction of children and adolescents' identity and can be a distinctive intervention for youth education and socialization.