Reimagining co-production as playful learning: A new perspective on autistic students’ experiences of participatory design and digital storytelling

Abstract

The views and perspectives of autistic children and young people are often downplayed or dismissed in both research and educational practice due to barriers created by deficit-focused conceptualisations of autism. Solutions are needed to address the lack of opportunities which autistic students are afforded to contribute their views and perspectives. Digital stories are short, student-centred videos, which can capture autistic children’s educational experiences and identities by focusing on their strengths and agency. This thesis conceptualises the creation of digital stories as a form of co-production, investigating how digital stories could be used as a method to explore autistic students’ experiences of participatory design, and the process of co-creating digital stories to support educational transitions. This thesis consists of two participatory action research studies conducted with students from Fairmead School, a special school in England for autistic students and students with mild to moderate learning disabilities. The research questions addressed were:
1) What insights can digital stories provide into autistic students’ educational experiences of participatory design?
2) How can co-creating digital stories with autistic students provide opportunities for agency, learning and collaboration in schools?
The first study focused on students’ experiences of participatory design in a weekly coding club between November 2020 and January 2022. Fourteen key stage four (KS4) students worked with school staff and technology professionals to design, develop and evaluate a computer game. The students made digital stories about their experiences, and co-produced evaluative interviews. The second study engaged another group of KS4 students to co-create digital stories, which were intended to support students transitioning to a new school building. Students worked together over seven weeks to co-create digital stories about their school, and afterwards engaged in reflective evaluation activities and interviews. The research employed a social semiotic multimodal approach to analysis, which valued the many and varied ways which students contributed to each of the projects.
Both studies add to growing evidence for the use of creative, participatory, and multimodal methods by demonstrating the utility of digital stories as a flexible method for representing students’ views and perspectives. Findings emphasised the centrality of fun to students’ experiences, while also recognising the entanglement between students’ experiences of fun, agency, collaboration, and learning. To address the limitations of adult-centred accounts of co-production and reflect the potential of co-production as an educational experience, this thesis reconceptualises students’ experiences of co-production as playful learning.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Verity Charlie Stone Ward: orcid.org/0000-0003-1921-2030

ORCID for Sarah Parsons: orcid.org/0000-0002-2542-4745

ORCID for Hanna Kovshoff: orcid.org/0000-0001-6041-0376

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