BEYOND CURRICULUM INTEGRATION: DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP AS AN ESSENTIAL DIMENSION IN INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

Given the predominance of digital artifacts in contemporary social practices, teacher training is no longer limited to the instrumental incorporation of technologies and now requires a critical problematization of their uses, meanings, and ethical-political implications. This study starts from the following question: what knowledge related to Digital Citizenship is foreseen for the initial training of basic education teachers, and what is its relevance to the comprehensiveness of this training? Anchored in a qualitative approach, of a documentary nature combined with a literature review, this work analyzes two documents currently in force in the Brazilian context: the National Curriculum Guidelines for Initial Teacher Training and the Framework of Digital Knowledge for Teachers, employing the procedures of Content Analysis. The focus is on the Digital Citizenship dimension, composed of the knowledge of Responsible Use, Safe Use, and Critical Use of digital technologies, understood from the axes of "understanding" and "practice". The results demonstrate that such knowledge constitutes a preponderant element of teacher training, guiding the construction of a professional profile committed to ethics, critical thinking, and civic engagement in the context of digital culture. The analysis also allows for the elaboration of thematic categories that problematize normative prescriptions, emphasizing challenges in the effective curricular integration and development of this knowledge within teacher training programs. Based on the study's results, it can be concluded that digital citizenship should be understood as an indispensable and constitutive dimension of initial teacher training, the realization of which requires institutional, pedagogical, and formative conditions that transcend the normative level.