Digital Citizenship and Online Behaviour Education: Teaching Students Safety, Ethics, and Responsibility Online

<span>The rash increase in the problem of digital risks, such as advanced cyber-aggression, fake news, and systemic data abuse, makes a critical re-examination of Digital Citizenship (DC) education at the K-12 level significant. It is a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), i.e., an evidence synthesis enabling the identification and evaluation of which of the existing instructional models are most likely to succeed in bridging the long-standing knowledge-action gap in the context of online behaviour of the students. By use of thematic analysis, the research discovers that successful DC programmes are based on three vital themes. To start with, Ethical-Behavioural Anchors are necessary, which requires that the concept of safety teaching should be integrated with Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) to help students develop a sense of pro-social bystander agency and prepare them for critical criticism of the commercial data world. Second, the Dilemma-Based Agency Model is the best one since it makes use of Project-Based Learning and cross-curricular integration to employ the social cognitive theory by Bandura to face moral decisions in complex situations. Third, the Teacher Competence and Sustainability Crisis negatively affects the sustainability of programmes, marked by high levels of educator anxiety and a lack of mandated instructional time by the institution. The paper finds that the research should demand systemic policy change, and integrated, competency-based curricula must be favoured over the reactive counterpart, which is fragmented.</span>