To phub or not to phub? Exploring social and moral reasoning in a digital citizenship after-school program

One of the biggest challenges of the century is to use empowering pedagogical practices to help students navigate morally complex cyber spaces. This exploratory study investigates social moral reasoning of students regarding psychologically harmful digital scenarios. The research was part of an empowerment-based digital citizenship after-school pilot program for grade 5-7 students in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Social Domain Theory (SDT) (Turiel, 1983; Smetana et al., 2014) is used as the theoretical framework for interpreting students' reasoning. Phubbing as a complex scenario became the focus of the study. Research questions explored how students conceptualize their understanding of phubbing; what domains of social reasoning guide students to make judgments about phubbing, how these insights help integrate moral education to digital citizenship education. Findings demonstrate that participants were employing all three domains of SDT in their reasoning, hence there is a need to inquire more information about the intentions behind the act.