Paper short abstract:

The case study of a teachers’ training program for refugee education in Greece offers insights into anthropology’s potential to cultivate critical digital citizenship through reflective, open and collaborative online pedagogies.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the intercultural and intersectional orientation of a teachers’ training program (Teachers Capacity Building on Integration of Refugee and Migrant Children in Greece, implemented by the University of Athens, funded by UNICEF), the paper attempts to articulate a critique on the proliferating discourse around “digital skills” and offer a broad understanding of how online education may cultivate digital citizenship for a more open and diverse education and cohabitation.

Entangling pedagogy, anthropology and sociology, we attempt to reframe the recent concept of digital habitus in the field of affective and collaborative digital education, which strives for conditions of imagining and working towards a better world. Drawing on Bourdieu’s seminal work on the habitus as an intangible, embodied and permeating dimension of socialization, we argue that synchronous and asynchronous online training develops not only a set of practical skills but a whole array of perceptions, attitudes and behaviors around education and sociality in general. Grounded on the analysis of the participants’ reflective testimonies and online observation, the findings confirm that digital learning environments which encourage reflexivity, creativity, and intercultural understanding lead to a shift in positionality that enhances our critical understanding of contemporary cultural practices and of our habitual involvement with digital technologies. The approach of digital education as a relational process which perpetually transforms the habitus of the participants helps us better grasp and address the digital divide, and bridge the teachers’ habitus with the habitus of (refugee) students, thus promoting the creation of emancipatory learning spaces and digital sociality.