This article explores how digital storytelling offers the potential to support transformative global citizenship education (TGCE) through a case study of the Bridges to Understanding program that connected middle and high school students globally using digital storytelling. Drawing on a TGCE framework, this research project probed the curriculum and digital stories using a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The findings of this study showed that digital storytelling, as integrated into the curriculum, enhanced student engagement with non-mainstream perspectives and self-reflection. However, the core elements of discussing controversial issues, analyzing systemic causes/impacts of global problems, and determining collective action responses required critical pedagogical practices beyond those embedded within the digital storytelling curriculum.

Résumé de l'articleDans le passé, des projets de recherche ont étudié la façon dont les connaissances civiques et les points de vue sur la citoyenneté des enseignants influencent leurs objectifs, leurs pratiques pédagogiques et leur confiance lorsqu'ils enseignent cette matière. Or, peu d'études se sont attardées à comprendre comment les futurs enseignants développent une identité de formateurs en éducation civique en participant à des projets d'apprentissage en milieu communautaire. Cette étude de cas se base sur le cadre conceptuel d'autodétermination de Baxter Magolda. Elle analyse de quelle manière les futurs enseignants étudiant au sein des universités canadiennes ont amorcé un processus d'autodétermination de leur identité comme formateurs à la citoyenneté, en développant et en mettant en place des modules d'apprentissages civiques destinés aux jeunes dans le cadre d'un projet communautaire. Notre analyse qualitative des données indiquent que la participation dans un projet de service communautaire visant le changement peut amener les futurs enseignants à remettre en question leurs hypothèses sur l'implication des jeunes, améliorer leur sentiment d'auto-efficacité et, jusqu'à un certain point, développer une conscience d'eux-mêmes lorsqu'ils entrent en relation avec les autres. ABSTRACT. Previous scholarship has examined how teachers' civic knowledge and conceptions of citizenship influence their goals, pedagogical practices, and confidence in teaching citizenship, but few studies have probed how teacher candidates develop identities as civic educators through community servicelearning projects. This case study draws upon Baxter Magolda's framework of self-authorship to investigate how teacher candidates in a Canadian university began to self-author their identities as civic educators through their experience of developing and delivering citizenship learning modules to youth through a community-based project. Our qualitative analysis of the data indicates that participating in change-oriented service-learning can lead teacher candidates to challenge their assumptions about youth engagement, increase their sense of self-efficacy as civic educators, and, to some extent, develop an awareness of self in relation to others.

According to the government agency responsible for tabulating trends in voting patterns, electoral participation in Canada plunged steadily from the 1990s to early twenty-first century; most of the decline is attributed to a dwindling of interest among youth voters, specifically those between 18 and 24 years of age. Recent national and international research links experiential learning with increased civic engagement. By framing our community student-learning project around student engagement and issues that the students raised, our study evolved as a joint collaboration among a government agency (Elections Canada), a national youth leadership programme (Encounters With Canada) and a Canadian university’s Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. This study gives particular voice to students to help educators better understand how teenagers see themselves as citizens, what issues they identify as significant, and what resources and materials they claim they need to engage with in the democratic process.

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