A Comparative Study of Teaching Digital Literacy Skills in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study compares the tools and strategies used in teaching digital literacy in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, alongside how the role of the teacher and student is understood, and how student and teacher attitudes and competence, as well as socioeconomic and cultural factors, intersect with the teaching of digital literacy skills in both countries. As the literature review in Chapter 2 shows, while there is a large literature on digital literacy, there are no comparative studies of digital literacy teaching in the UK and Saudi Arabia. This is the literature gap this study bridges, through a research synthesis methodology (outlined in Chapter 3) which identifies and analyses relevant literature to find connections and patterns between both countries. Chapter 4 then presents and analyses the results. The main findings are that digital literacy is understood in broadly the same way in both countries, which means teaching practices from one can be applied in the other. The study also finds that in both countries the role of the teacher and student is understood to have expanded to not only include knowledge of their specific subject, but its relation to digital skills as well, which should be integrated into the curriculum from the primary level onwards. Nonetheless, the study also finds that Saudi Arabia faces some specific challenges related to digital infrastructure and human resources that are much less apparent in the literature on the UK. Furthermore, where the literature on Saudi Arabia tends to emphasise the enhancement of digital literacy levels for economic reasons, in the UK the emphasis is as much if not more on digital literacy as a means to create empowered citizens. This further reflects the cultural and developmental differences between the two countries and impacts how digital literacy is conceptualised and taught in both.