Drawing together a few strands of my thinking; when it comes to using design to help children and young people articulate their educational futures, a key element should, I think, understand them as protagonists (Ref: 1, 2, 3).
I’m drawn to this approach (see my previous post) as it connects to two important policies relevant to my context of Scottish education.
The first is the Scottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD). My project would sit in the first of the “double diamonds” (4) and the SAtSD framework provides a good ethical approach to my work (and crucially, one that is endorsed by central government). The SAtSD sets out 7 principles for using the approach. Principle 4 states:
4. We use inclusive and accessible research and design methods so citizens can participate fully and meaningfully.
In order to do this I am drawn to Education Scotland’s policy document Realising The Ambition: Being Me . This document sets out guiding principles for working with young children, placing emphasis on their autonomy within their environment:
We often talk about the environment in terms of physical spaces, but the key part of the environment for children is the human, social environment of positive nurturing interactions. Experiences are also part of the environment. Children need to learn things for themselves, but this does not mean they should always do so by themselves. We can, by following and building on children’s motivations and interests, support young children to make the most of the environment for learning and development.
Connecting these two ideas; the research and design methods I use in my project must allow children and young people to participate fully (i.e be the protagonist). In order to this I must allow them to learn for themselves, building on their interests and motivations, rooted in their own environment. The question then becomes how? Which design methods might I use and how might I use them?
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1 Iversen, O.S., Smith, R.C. and Dindler, C., 2017, June. Child as protagonist: Expanding the role of children in participatory design. In Proceedings of the 2017 conference on interaction design and children (pp. 27-37).
2 Clark, Alison. “Young Children as Protagonists and the Role of Participatory, Visual Methods in Engaging Multiple Perspectives.” American journal of community psychology 46, no. 1–2 (2010): 115–123.
3 Schepers, Selina, Katrien Dreessen, and Bieke Zaman. “Rethinking Children’s Roles in Participatory Design: The Child as a Process Designer.” International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 16 (2018): 47–54.
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