Digital citizenship education with 3–5-year-olds in an Australian kindergarten

Abstract

In an increasingly digitally complex world, it is important that young children develop an understanding of digital technology. Digital Citizenship Education is often introduced in primary school or even secondary school contexts. However, recent research has called for introducing Digital Citizenship Education earlier to include children attending early childhood education and care settings. This study reports on a project where an early childhood educator and researchers co-designed a learning experience related to Digital Citizenship Education. The Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship programme, while designed for children in school settings, was used to begin conversations with the team about what Digital Citizenship Education could look like for children in a kindergarten setting (children aged 3–5 years) in Australia. The purpose of this study was to examine how Digital Citizenship Education could be implemented in an early childhood context with young children. Together, the educator and researchers designed a learning experience suitable for the context with a focus on the concept of digital footprints, a concept that helps children to understand how they might leave identifiable data about themselves available online. We detail the study as a single case and explore two themes that were apparent throughout the process, which constitute the major findings of this research. Firstly, young children require concrete language to facilitate understandings of Digital Citizenship and secondly, educator knowledge and pedagogies concerning Digital Citizenship need further support. This study concludes that educators need further support and explicit examples of practice so they can understand how Digital Citizenship Education can be embedded within an early childhood setting. This study concludes by reiterating the importance of developing learning experiences that are appropriate to each context, while providing scope for educators to draw on their own knowledge and experience.

Introduction

In our post digital world, children and young people use digital technology as part of their everyday lives, often without seeing a distinction between the digital and non-digital (Edwards, 2023). For many adults, this distinction is more clearly defined and can be at odds with nostalgic notions of what childhood means and how early childhood education should be organised and delivered. In this article, we argue that because children are growing up in an increasingly complex digital world it is important for them to learn how to safely and critically navigate the digital world. The relationship between communication, learning and entertainment requires an approach that includes early childhood educators alongside the other adults in a child’s life to assist them to develop their Digital Citizenship knowledge and skills.

Digital Citizenship Education encourages children and young people to engage respectfully and responsibly when using digital technologies, especially in online spaces (Zhong and Zheng, 2023). There are many resources available to assist educators to develop learning experiences that help students explore the different aspects of Digital Citizenship Education, however many of these are aimed at high school or primary school students. These programmes often attend to aspects of Digital Citizenship such as online safety, privacy, data and password security and cyberbullying. In this paper we examine how the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship programme, originally designed for the primary years of school, could be adapted for younger children through a co-design process with an early childhood educator.

Initially, we provide some background context about the policy support for the learning about digital technologies in early years settings in Australia. Following this, we consider existing literature about how Digital Citizenship is defined in various ways, before we go on to canvass existing scholarship about Digital Citizenship Education in early years settings. This is followed by an outline of the case study methodology we used in our project to explore possibilities for Digital Citizenship Education in one early education setting in Brisbane, Australia. We then provide a detailed overview of the case study in action, accompanied by critical reflection. The final part of the paper considers two themes we determined from the case study and the implications for the opportunities and challenges of undertaking Digital Citizenship Education with young children.

Early education and digital technologies in Australia

In the early childhood education and care context in Australia, there is a deep acknowledgement of the role digital technologies play in the lives of children. The latest version of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), the documents that guide the practices of early years educators, consistently refer to digital media and digital technologies as embedded in children’s lives and as a tool for children to explore other aspects of learning (Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE), 2022). Additionally, Early Childhood Australia (ECA), the peak body for early childhood advocacy in Australia, developed its ‘Statement on young children and digital technologies’ (Early Childhood Australia (ECA), 2018) in response to educators needing guidance on how to support the use of digital technologies in their early childhood education and care services. In the updated 2025 version of this document, citizenship remains one of four important areas in relation to digital technologies, recognising children’s rights to access digital technology as well as the important place of online safety and cyber-safety education (ECA, 2025).

Alongside this, there are some recently developed resources for educators specifically created to support Digital Citizenship Education within early childhood education and care services. Australia’s Office of the eSafety Commissioner, for example, in partnership with ECA, developed a module specifically aimed to support educators to address online safety. ¹ The Playing IT Safe ² website also has resources and activities for families and educators to support online safety for young children. More recently, the Young Children in Digital Society ³ project launched a website specifically to offer educators and families support on the use of digital technologies with children, partly focussed on citizenship.

Despite the acknowledgement that children are actively using digital technologies, and the associated resources around Digital Citizenship Education and online safety, the research on how such resources are implemented in early childhood education and care settings is sparse and needs further development (Edwards, 2021), with a recent review by Estellés and Doyle (2025) finding only five studies that explicitly focussed on early childhood education and online safety. In this paper we explore some possibilities for Digital Citizenship Education for young children between the ages of 3 and 5 in early childhood settings by presenting a case study of practice. This research examines a kindergarten setting, where an educator and researchers co-designed an aspect of Digital Citizenship Education to feature as part of the children’s learning. We explain how the educator was supported to think about how elements of a Digital Citizenship Education curriculum could be incorporated in her early childhood setting and examine how the subsequent learning experience was enacted in a group setting within the early childhood service.

Digital citizenship education

Digital Citizenship Education has been conceptualised in many ways. Ribble’s (2015) approach considers the acceptable behaviours or social guidelines associated with being active in the digital world. He presents a set of elements for schools and teachers to consider when implementing Digital Citizenship Education, relating to the actions and behaviours deemed to be appropriate, such as digital security and digital communication, among others (Ribble, 2015). This approach, while useful for the school-based context in which it is often applied, is narrower in view than other approaches. Choi’s (2016) conceptualisation of Digital Citizenship Education, based on a systematic review of the literature at the time, offers an approach that takes into account skills and responsible use of technology, but situates these skills within a broader framework that accounts for the digital context where people are engaged in activities online. This approach considers how people engage politically and culturally online and sometimes form resistance to power and hegemonic practises (Choi, 2016). That is, Choi’s approach draws attention to the explicit citizenship practices that may play out in digital spaces.

More recently, Webster (2024: 120) has explored post digital theory in relation to Digital Citizenship Education to encourage critical engagement with the ‘meaning of citizenship in a complex sociotechnical environment’. Previous conceptualisations of Digital Citizenship Education may not have focussed on, for instance, issues relating to technologies that children and adults interact with in everyday life including algorithms and the associated data, and artificial intelligence. That is, an aspect of citizenship is developing a critical orientation to emerging technologies. While there can be limited opportunity to enact change within these complex systems for the average person, Webster contends that asking critical questions about these technologies is important for Digital Citizenship Education in post digital times. This conceptualisation reinforces the idea that we should start from what children already know and do in the digital space, aligning to early childhood curriculum and pedagogical approaches in Australia.

Children and digital technologies in ECEC

Approaching Digital Citizenship Education in early childhood settings is not straight forward or without controversy. Educators often have conflicting beliefs about the role of digital technology in early childhood settings, with one in four UK educators asserting that digital media have no role in early childhood (Billington, 2016). Early childhood pedagogy is often seen as incompatible with digital media use and is not consistently valued as part of young children’s learning (Marsh et al., 2019). Some educators do not acknowledge digital technology use by children as an activity that can be supported by adult interaction (Thorpe et al., 2015). Yang and Hong (2024) discuss this as a ‘second level digital divide’, where technologies are available in early childhood settings, but there is a variability in how educators use them. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ General Comment No. 25 on the rights of the child in the digital environment has received support although scholars internationally advise caution on implemenation (Livingstone et al., 2024); with the comment itself promoting that ‘digital literacy is taught in schools, as part of basic education curricula, from the preschool level and throughout all school years’ (United Nations, 2021: 17).

There is often a tension between digital technology use and played-based learning (Roberts and Knaus, 2023; Undheim, 2022), with educators finding it challenging to incorporate digital media, technology and popular culture in curricula (Grieshaber et al., 2021). Additionally, some educators have concerns about the risk of digital play, including a perceived increase in social isolation due to screen use or the possibility of addiction (Chu et al., 2024). Play, which is central to early childhood education pedagogy, does not need to be thought of as something separate to digital experiences, however dominant ideologies about play-based pedagogy often leave little room for digital devices, impacting the attitudes and beliefs of early childhood educators (Palaiologou, 2016b).

Despite some resistance, there has been increased attention to the concept of digital play. Digital play research explores both how young children engage with digital play, for example through virtual activities, and the use of digital objects, ideas or characters in the physical or ‘real’ world (Bird and Edwards, 2015; Fleer, 2017; Marsh et al., 2016). Vogt and Hollenstein (2021) used the term ‘digital transformation’ to explain how children use pretend play to imagine themselves as inventors, developers and users of future technologies, starting from children’s current experiences with digital technology. Although the body of work is growing, with Chu et al.’s (2024) recent systematic review discussing digital play as a pedagogical approach with a range of affordances and features, ‘little is currently known about how to make Digital Citizenship Education play-based for young children’ (Edwards et al., 2018b: 7), with many Digital Citizenship programmes or resources aimed at older children of at least school age.

Supporting digital citizenship education in early childhood settings

Young children use digital technologies in their daily lives, including for play, learning and communication. Much of the research specifically pertaining to Digital Citizenship Education, however, refers to older children in at least primary school or, more often, high school. Ladd and Traver (2023) contend that Digital Citizenship should be provided to children at an early age, particularly as children start to engage with digital technologies across the various dimensions of their lives. This is supported by Bittner et al. (2018) who state children’s development as Digital Citizens should be supported by educators through curriculum.

Research by Lauricella et al. (2020) showed that in the US, many teachers of children in K-2 settings are teaching young children about one or more components of Digital Citizenship Education, but up to 40% of teachers are not covering any related topics. In Australia, research by Zabatiero et al. (2018: 19) found only 18% of educators agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘Families and educators know how to support young children’s rights and safety in online spaces’. While this does not cover everything related to Digital Citizenship and is focussed on online safety and the right to access online digital spaces, it shows how underprepared many educators are to deal with related topics meaningfully in their early childhood settings. Although we know Digital Citizenship is a complex issue, educators play an important part in fostering connections between children’s home and learning contexts (Palaiologou, 2016a).

Research approach

We were interested in examining how Digital Citizenship Education could be implemented in an early childhood setting. We used a case study approach for this research (Merriam and Tisdell, 2015; Stake, 1995) as we were interested in exploring in detail how one early childhood educator was able to modify existing Digital Citizenship Education resources for young children in a co-design process with researchers. The case is not representative of all kindergartens and educators, but rather allows us to explore the research question, How can educators implement Digital Citizenship Education in early childhood settings and what are the challenges when undertaking this work? The educator, Lori (a pseudonym), recruited for this study, was identified by the early childhood education and care service provider she worked for as an educator who was beginning to engage in the digital space and was interested in learning to implement new ideas. Lori engaged with the Common Sense Media (CSM) Digital Citizenship ⁴ programme to use as inspiration for a future learning experience, rather than trying to mould the lessons and make the early childhood setting more ‘school like’. The purpose was not to use the CSM lessons plans in full but rather use it as a stimulus to discuss ideas that would be useful in an early childhood setting.

Our approach to the case study was to work organically with Lori to co-plan a learning experience and to record its implementation with the children in her care during a typical kindergarten day. Our aim was to uncover the opportunities and challenges associated with Digital Citizenship Education in an early learning setting. A range of data were collected including audio recorded interviews and meetings with Lori, and an observation of the learning experience, including photographs and observation notes. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis of the data was then undertaken (Braun and Clarke, 2022) where two key themes were determined. The first was ‘Young children require concrete language to facilitate understandings of Digital Citizenship’ and the second was ‘Educator knowledge and pedagogies concerning Digital Citizenship need further support’. We acknowledge that these two themes were determined by researchers with an interest in digital media technologies and media literacy, and that other researchers may have determined a different set of themes. That said, these themes, in conjunction with the case outlined below, offer insights into our research question and help us understand some of the challenges and areas of focus in relation to Digital Citizenship Education with young children.

Banksia kindergarten early education case study

The participants in this case were Lori and the children who attended her early childhood and care setting, known as Banksia Kindergarten (pseudonym). The kindergarten is in a suburban area south of Brisbane, a large capital city of Australia. Children who attended the service were on site for 2 days per week. There were plentiful opportunities for indoor and outdoor play, with a large yard, playground and undercover area for children to play and explore. While there were times when the group met inside on the carpet for group time, as is the case in many kindergartens, it was far more common for children to explore their own interests in a variety of different ways.

Lori was an experienced early childhood educator, and she had also worked at the Head Office of the kindergarten provider to manage service-wide projects. The kindergarten provider asked her to join this project because she had an interest in using digital technologies in early education. When approached, Lori was interested in taking up the opportunity to explore new ideas that could be embedded in her kindergarten’s curriculum.

While Lori was enthusiastic about the project and keen to be involved, she had some reservations about the level of planning she thought was appropriate for the children at her kindergarten, describing the service as child-centred and responsive to the interests and needs of the children who attended. She explained that there was a wide age range of children at the kindergarten and that some children would be able to comprehend new ideas immediately, but for others, she would be planting the seed of an idea that would germinate over time. Lori said, ‘There are some who get it, and some who aren’t ready for it. . .well I’ve dropped an idea and when you’re ready for it it’s in there’.

Co-planning process

An initial meeting was scheduled with Lori and the authors of this paper at a mutually convenient time. During the meeting, we talked through the Common Sense Media programme as a starting point. We watched some of the videos together and looked at lesson plans to get a sense of the programme and explored how it was organised according to the concepts used to frame the programme at the time of the project. These concepts included Privacy and Security, Digital Footprint and Media Balance. Common Sense Media, both the overall organisation and the specific Digital Citizenship programme, was new to Lori.

Lori expressed that she had previously started exploring some ideas related to Digital Citizenship in her kindergarten, particularly the notion of consent when taking and appearing in photographs. The main reason for taking photographs was to upload and share them in an online platform (Storypark), used by early years educators to communicate with parents and document children’s learning. An educator could, for instance, write a story, attach a photo, and tag multiple children in the story. Family members with permission can see this through their own version of the app on their phone or device. Lori explained that she aimed to model consent to the children when she took photographs of them, using the following kind of language:

Now that I’ve taken that photo, are you ok if I upload it to Storypark to share with your mum and dad? To try and start that sense of once you release that image to someone else, they’ve got control over it too, it’s not just me now holding it.

She recognised that these were early steps towards discussions around the concepts of privacy and digital footprints. At the kindergarten, the children were beginning to assist in the creation of their documentation for Storypark. For example, children were taking photographs and making suggestions for ‘stories’ (similar to what is commonly seen on social media posts including images and text) to be posted on the platform, with active discussions about consent for taking photographs. Although this activity was in its infancy, Lori felt she could develop this idea to align with the concept of Digital Citizenship.

Lori indicated that she believed it was important to begin to address these topics with the children in her kindergarten. Of Digital Citizenship Education, she said, ‘I think it needs to be in kindergartens, it certainly is in our revised EYLF [Early Years Learning Framework], that we need to address eSafety and we need to make sure children are aware of all these things’. Lori suggested that simple, practical ideas were needed to assist early childhood educators navigate the Digital Citizenship space. According to her, it was not an area many educators felt conformable with, and it required them to push outside of the tightly held beliefs of many concerning play and nature being incompatible with the digital. She was mindful that there was a balance between providing concrete materials such as detailed learning experiences and resources for educators and having educators incorporate concepts into their everyday practices. While the end goal might be for educators to incorporate concepts into the early childhood curriculum of their service, guidance for educators is required to assist them to develop knowledge in this area.

At the conclusion of this meeting, we agreed to a second meeting a few weeks later. This provided space for Lori to further reflect on the concepts she was interested in exploring. At this subsequent meeting, held at Lori’s kindergarten, we discussed the details of a learning experience that Lori had conceptualised between our visits, including the pedagogical approach she had decided to use. Lori did have some concerns about all children being part of the activity as they often facilitated learning experiences in smaller groups where children could engage as they wanted. We supported Lori to make the decisions that would align with her usual practice and subsequently she decided she would facilitate a whole group activity, despite her initial reservations about this.

Learning experience implementation

On an agreed day, we attended Banksia Kindergarten. Early in the morning the two of us researchers sat with the children to build train tracks, read books and make cards so that the children had an opportunity to become a little familiar with us in their space. At morning break, Lori gathered the children on the mat facing the large television screen. She asked the children if they could recall a conversation they had the day before about Digital Citizenship. She had decided to have some earlier discussion with the children, so the ideas were not completely new to them in this session. She asked the children what a citizen could be, and the children replied with concepts like ‘a person’, ‘the world’, ‘the TV’ and ‘the iPad’.

Lori then played a short video from the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship programme about Digital Footprints, which asked children to think about what pieces, or footprints, they leave behind when they use the internet (see Figure 1). They watched the video through twice. Once finished, Lori asked the children, ‘What footprints are you leaving online?’ She probed the idea that maybe there are footprints online due to the time the children spend at kindy.

Figure 1.

The children watch a short video.

Lori brought up the kindergarten’s communication platform, Storypark, for everyone to see on the large screen. Together she and the children looked at the educator view of Storypark. They could see all the faces of the children on the screen, since each child had their own profile. Lori chose a child’s profile to view and on the screen we could see which people outside of the kindergarten could see the first child’s stories. Lori explained to the children that, looking at the screen, we could see that the two people who could see this image were the child’s mum and dad. She asked the children if they thought this was OK. The children nodded in agreement that yes this was ok.

Lori then focussed on a story she could see that was about tree climbing. In this story other children were tagged, meaning multiple adults would be able to see a story about the first child because their own child was also in the image. Again, this seemed reasonable for the children at surface level. However, Lori probed a little more deeply, asking:

Lori:

What about if it went to someone we don’t know?

Child:

They could be a bad stranger.

Lori:

Is it ok for a bad stranger to see us?

Children:

No.

This broadened the discussion as the children and Lori considered how a ‘bad stranger’ might be able to see the images of the children on a platform that is seemingly secure. One child said that someone could ‘hack into it’, or that someone might tell them how to access the photograph. Lori questioned how we can make sure only safe people can see our own images. She asked the children if there was a way to choose what our families could see, or how we could choose what images are on Storypark. She then reframed this to pose a question to the children: ‘How can you be the author of your Storypark?’ As Lori had indicated to us, it was important to her that she instil in the children that they should have active choice and agency, not only for this learning experience, but for her continued effort to involve children in their own learning documentation throughout the year.

After this example, the session continued in a similar fashion – multiple children said they would like to view their Storypark profiles and see what others could see about them. We also saw posts where some adults had commented on the stories of their own child or a group story before Lori wrapped up the session and the children packed up their morning tea lunchboxes.

Post-learning episode discussion

In the follow up discussion held a week later, Lori explained the discussion around being a Digital Citizen continued after the observed session. Some children drew representations of what it meant to be a Digital Citizen and Lori said she also had some conversations with families about where children might have picked up terms they used in the sessions such as ‘hacking’. Parents reported to Lori that these terms were not something children were explicitly taught, but rather, were terms that the children had acquired in conversation with family members, or by overhearing conversations.

Lori explained that although some children were able to articulate clear connections from the session with their everyday lives, most children need time to make and build these connections more deeply. She said:

I think it will need to stew a way a little bit. I don’t know, I think a few sat quietly but it will sit in their brains for a little while and then we’ll touch on something and it will come out.

In the subsequent time in the kindergarten, Lori also noticed some children being more mindful about how they provided consent to be in photos or videos. She recalled an instance where a child asked her to take photos and videos. She said:

I asked him do you want me to share those on Storypark? And instead of the normal answer of ‘Yes’, he said ‘Yes I do and you can send it to my friend. . .from the other group and [Friend 1], [Friend 2] and [Friend 3]’. They can have access to what I’ve created.

Children also asked each other if they could take photos and videos of and for them. Whereas children might previously have always said yes, Lori explained some children were saying no, or asking for different kinds of images to be taken. This indicated to Lori that the learning episode had been meaningful for the children and that this constituted a form of Digital Citizenship Education.

Analysis and discussion

This case study provides insight into the opportunities and challenges for Digital Citizenship Education for very young children. We recognise this account of a single learning experience has limitations in terms of its representativeness and that each context would require consideration of the specific interests and unique everyday digital experiences of the children involved. However, the case provides some important insights that we believe could be followed up in other settings by ourselves and other researchers interested in supporting the implementation of Digital Citizenship Education with young children. The case allows us to consider two main themes to help us understand how to best support educators engage with Digital Citizenship concepts.

Theme 1: Young children require concrete language to facilitate understandings of digital citizenship

It became clear during the case study that Digital Citizenship Education often relies on metaphors that may be unsuitable for younger children who are not able to understand or articulate abstract concepts. The original Common Sense Media curriculum uses the metaphor of Digital Footprints as part of its organising framework. It is as an entry point for children and educators to help explain the ways we all leave imprints or parts of ourselves behind in online spaces. Primary school aged children may generally be able to understand the associated ideas and the metaphor of a Digital Footprint. However, this case study has shown us that the concept of Digital Footprints is too abstract for young children. In the learning experience facilitated by Lori, the concept of Digital Footprints was apparent to some degree, however both ourselves and Lori realised that children need more concrete terms to use when having discussions about what information we leave behind online through our use of programmes and platforms.

In addition, Lori said she realised that many children did not have a solid understanding the word ‘internet’. Even though they are on the internet or use the internet, they were not able to articulate what this meant, which aligns with research by Edwards et al. (2018a) where children articulated understandings of the internet based on conceptual practices and tool-based use. Additionally, Lori asked the children, ‘Where is it safe for me to share this?’ about some images. Although in this instance the idea that there can be ‘places’ on the internet might be challenging for some children to understand in a concrete way, this language equating the internet to a type of location is one way for children to liken their internet use to their safety in physical locations. For instance, children could consider what a safe place on the internet might look like and who might be involved, which may be similar to physical spaces. At this age, likening digital concepts to the physical non-digital world of children may offer a more concrete way to enter meaningful and useful discussions and learning experiences with young children.

Conceptual understandings are important to develop with young children so they can apply these across different experiences in the future. However, Danovitch (2019) attributes this progression of understanding to both cognitive development and experience. This means it is also important for children to have opportunities to draw on their own experiences with digital media as the starting point for learning. When young children learn about Digital Citizenship there can be tension between introducing new knowledge and responding to the wide experiences children bring with them into group settings. Media literacy approaches to education, which can inform Digital Citizenship Education, ask educators and teachers to draw on the spontaneous knowledge of children (the knowledge they bring with them about digital media) and with the help of adults, abstract this into scientific knowledge that they can learn to apply to other contexts (Buckingham, 2003). So, while developing conceptual understanding is the goal, starting with the concrete, or what children already understand, or can see or do, is essential.

Theme 2: Educator knowledge and pedagogies concerning digital citizenship need further support

As Lori indicated through our discussions, finding a balance between play-based pedagogies and intentional teaching in relation to Digital Citizenship concepts can be challenging for early childhood educators. Lewis et al.’s (2019) research shows that it can be difficult for educators to develop conceptual understandings when springboarding from children’s interests. Even though in this case Lori led the learning experience at group time, which according to Lewis et al. (2019: 16) could potentially provide the direction and questioning needed to ‘create the conditions for children’s conceptual development’, Lori indicated that this was not the preferred pedagogical approach in the service.

Lori was very committed to ensuring the children’s interests were prioritised with fewer teacher led activities. This meant she needed to be able to weave both her knowledge and understanding as well as the children’s knowledge and understanding of consent, privacy and ‘digital footprints’ into the discussion with the children in this group. Due to the planning and discussion required prior to the Storypark discussion with children, Lori knew the discussion would take place at a particular place and time, but usually a discussion like this would occur in response to children’s specific interests, and during the ebb and flow of a typical day’s activities.

Responding in the moment to children’s interests or using these interests as a springboard to delve deeper are ingrained aspects of an early childhood educators’ pedagogical practice. For many conversations about important topics like Digital Citizenship, educators often need to pick up on the interests and threads started by children and use these as an opportunity to question or open up the idea to others. During these spontaneous teaching moments, educators can use intentional teaching strategies to purposefully deepen children’s understanding, such as ‘asking questions, explaining, modelling, speculating, inquiring and demonstrating to extend children’s knowledge, skills and enjoyment in thinking and learning’ (AGDE, 2022: 22).

While some educators may be comfortable tackling this subject matter and have the knowledge and language to respond to children’s emerging interests around ideas related to Digital Citizenship, many educators are challenged by ideas related to the digital. Additionally, some educators question the validity of exploring digital technology and associated ideas in early childhood settings at all. Educators require time and resources to develop their own knowledge of Digital Citizenship so they can respond to the changing and expanding interests of children.

Implications and conclusion

Technology advances at a rapid pace and some educators may find it challenging to remain abreast of it. However, Digital Citizenship Education does not require educators to understand detailed aspects of technology. Rather, it seeks to provide educators with a framework to assist children and young people to consider their everyday digital practices and how they can continue to grow as respectful and responsible technology users now and into the future.

As Lori indicated, professional learning about Digital Citizenship Education is important for educators to address the evolving interests and needs of the children in their care. Lori advocated for a range of resources to be made available for educators including demonstration resources and vignettes of practice. Support for educators in this area is necessary and in the early stages. More explicit examples of practice would be useful. However, to support intentional teaching, educators need a broader and more comprehensive understanding of Digital Citizenship due to the way they respond to the needs and interests of children. If educators do not feel comfortable with Digital Citizenship Education broadly, they are less likely to look for and seize on opportunities that children raise through their play.

Some studies have focussed on pedagogy relating to digital play and digital technologies more broadly (Li et al., 2026), however further work is needed to understand how Digital Citizenship Education can be embedded within the early childhood context. This may or may not include the use of digital technology, depending on the intention and the children involved. Utilising digital pedagogies, especially digital play, to purposefully engage children in learning about concepts related to Digital Citizenship may provide an important way forward. While this case study certainly addressed Digital Citizenship in ways that were contextually bound and appropriate to the educator and children, it would be useful to consider learning experiences that are grounded in play, led by both educators and children, which are responsive to local context and needs.

More generally, as young children increasingly use digital media in their daily lives, it becomes necessary to provide opportunities for Digital Citizenship at the earliest stages of education. The most recent version of Australia’s Early Years of Learning Framework recognises this need and includes many references to how digital technologies may be introduced in early education. Indeed, the EYLF provides an important model for policy makers internationally and provides provocations for how other countries may wish to respond to the challenges and opportunities associated with young children’s use of digital technologies. Translating curriculum policy into practice remains a challenge, however, and we trust that this paper provides some initial insights into the support educators need as they aim to assist children to begin their journeys of successful Digital Citizenship.