Youth Agency in the Participatory Design of a Social Media Platform for Schools

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Comprehensive Approaches to Complex Problems: Using Quantitative/Mixed Methods to Study Cognition and Motivation in Context (San Diego)

Abstract

The work of solving our world’s challenges begins with the development of agency—the will and capacity to act on the world (Ahearn, 2002)—in youth. Real-world tasks and audiences spur youth agency but are as absent in educational environments as they are abundant on social media. This mixed-methods study engaged sixty middle school girls and non-binary students in the participatory design of a social media platform for schools and measures agency using the Student Agency Profile survey (Vaughn et al., 2020c). Preliminary analysis identifies prominent agentic features of students’ final platform designs, and indicates that throughout the design process, student agency increased by a small, but significant margin, and in particular, in the area of individual choice and motivation.

Author

• Emily Rose Southerton, Stanford University