Involving Youth as Educational Program Co-Designers: Disrupting Hierarchy and Empowering Youth

• In Event: Youth Co-Design: The Possibilities, Affordances, and Challenges of Including Youth in Educational Design

Abstract

Objectives
This analysis is part of a larger project called Badges for College Credit that partners informal science education programs with university faculty to design digital badge systems that culminate in college credit for adolescents who participate in programs in informal settings. To elevate youth voice and challenge standard hierarchical process of program design, we conducted a co-design model with youth at a local Aquarium. Youth volunteers worked as co-designers in creating a digital badge system to correspond with the Aquarium’s youth volunteer program that focuses on interpretation of local marine life and conservation issues to Aquarium patrons.

Perspectives
Digital badges is a design framework which can incorporate multiple objectives into the criteria of a single badge (Hickey, 2017; Authors, 2016). In co-design, youth contribute objectives that are important to them and may not be visible in traditional curriculum development methods. Youth as co-designers of their own educational programs challenges traditional hierarchical power structures. We consider how design participants are positioned in order to describe the ways in which people are put or put themselves into certain roles, categories, or ways of acting in order to fulfill an evolving storyline (Harré et al., 2009). Additionally, we consider the authenticity, value, and significance of the roles that youth are afforded (Nasir, 2012; Author, 2012).

Methods and Data Sources
The overarching project used a design-based research approach (Barab & Squire, 2004), using qualitative research methods. We analyzed video and documents from co-design design sessions that occurred from August 2016 through January, 2017. Following an initial round of analysis using grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2007), the video was reanalyzed and coded for youth positioning and roles.

Results
Initial results show that youth took on multiple and varying activities as part of the badge design process. The structure of each activity allowed youth to assume different roles and were positioned in different ways. In some activities youth led the design process, while other activities focused more on collecting youth perspectives. For example, during the creation of the badge pathways, where youth as primary designers youth organized program activities and identified categories of experiences then, designed pathways to reflect those experiences. In contrast, during criteria writing, youth described the components of program experiences, but required guidance to stay within the bounds of specific topics and prompts provided by the research team. Both experiences were significant components to creating the badge system, but the spheres of influence of youth work and perspectives varied depending on the task.

Significance
We argue that without utilizing a co-design approach, products such as digital badges may represent only hierarchical concerns while overlooking important but subtle aspects of learning and program experiences that are highly valued by youth. However, initial results indicate that, while co-design holds the promise of empowering youth and incorporating youth voice, co-design is not a uniform process, but one that requires intentional design of specific tasks, purposefully examining how the structure of specific tasks positions youth.

Authors

• Gavin Tierney, California State University - Fullerton

• Theresa Horstman, University of Washington - Bothell

• Carrie T. Tzou, University of Washington - Bothell