From Earning to Learning: Reasoning and Participation in Youth Co-design of Digital Badges

Youth co-design has the possibility to reframe learning and participation, repositioning and remediating youth roles. However, youth co-design processes can also unintentionally reproduce normative forms of power and learning. This paper describes how co-design processes can position youth as having full agency for the design of a digital badge system, yet their participation and design are still guided by existing normative concepts of learning. We asked: How do youth roles, positioning, activity structures, and materials shape youth agentic participation in co-design and the disruption of traditional hierarchical design processes? This paper documents the youth co-design of a digital badge system that represented participation in a program at an aquarium where youth volunteers interpret exhibits for aquarium patrons. In coordination with faculty at a local university, the badge system culminated in college credit for qualifying high school youth. During the co-design process, youth initially imported school-based frames of learning and participation that constrained definitions of the who, what, and how of learning. However, with the support of new physical and conceptual resources, the design team expanded how they framed learning and participation, while still maintaining some school-based products and processes. This paper contributes to literature on including youth in design processes, indicating the importance of scaffolding for agency and participation.