Open and distance learning in the development of 21st century citizenship: A metaphor analysis study

Citizenship can be defined as people's being and growing up as good individuals, being aware of themselves and the society and also showing respect to themselves and to the other people in the society. Having the basic rights and freedom, being aware of these rights and being sensible to these rights from national and international aspects constitute the basics of citizenship. Today's World, in which 21st century citizenship and 21st century skills are taking the attention of people, apart from the afore mentioned topics about citizenship, the idea of citizenship has been broadened to raising up individuals with the skills of creative and critical thinking, collaborative and co-operative working and empathy. In the 21st century digital societies, citizens, regardless of whether they are digital immigrants or digital natives, are all exposed to the digital technologies. So they come to teaching and learning practices with already developed beliefs and experiences on these technologies. As the amount of exposure to the technology increases, the potentially irresponsible and harmful use of it is also escalating alarmingly, so so a common understanding of the shared rules, norms, and structures regarding the use of digital technologies needs to be created within both the social and academic contexts. Apart from reaching to the all parts of the society, open and distance education is a type of education that fights with the inequality in education and aims to bring education to the all people in the society with a flexibility. As an effective way of education, open and distance education is expected to play an important role in people's gaining the norms of the 21st century citizenship. According to a recent report carried out by the EU (EU Kids Online report, 2014), there is a high increase in the use of digital technologies among Turkish citizens aged between 16-24 and this result necessitates an urgent move by the open and distance education institutions, that educate a big number of people in Turkey, about informing people on the issue. To sum up, 21st century has brought its own norms with the onset of it and this has made it necessary for people to keep up with the norms that is within the technology bound lifestyle of the century. Having the undeniable effect on people, benefitting from open and distance education is expected to be a rational implementation in such an important issue. The aim of this project is to assess the effectiveness of open and distance education in developing 21st century citizenship through a metaphor analysis research. Keywords: Open and Distance Learning, 21st century citizenship training, metaphor analysis