Designing a Model for Digital Citizenship Education Curriculum for Mental Retarded Students

Purpose: The aim of this study is to model a citizenship education curriculum for students with special needs for digital citizenship education.Method: The qualitative methodology of the grounded theory approach has been used. The statistical population is experts and specialists in special curriculum planning and experts of exceptional organizations. Sampling was performed using the non-probabilistic judgmental (targeted) method. Interviews were conducted with research samples. To sample, the snowball method was used and the interview was conducted in a semi-structured manner with open and general questions for up to 15 people to saturate the data, but for more assurance, up to 24 people were interviewed. Finally, the factors were identified using the foundation data technique using Atlas ti software. An in-depth interview was used as the main data collection tool at this stage.Findings: Based on the obtained results, a total of 106 concepts and 21 categories or open-source codes were identified and extracted. The 21 identified categories were divided into 6 main datasets of the foundation.Among the identified factors, the axial coding paradigm was performed and based on that, the linear relationship was determined between research categories including causal conditions, axial categories, contextual conditions, intervening conditions, strategies, and consequences.Conclusion: The results show the importance of the content of citizenship education and training methods. Regarding teaching and learning methods, the formation of informal groups and monitoring of the activities of groups, learning in practice, and student-centered and participatory teaching methods are emphasized.