Inclusive or Inflexible
Netta Iivari, Marianne Kinnula · 2016
Relatively little attention has been paid to discussing what it means when children's participation in technology design is genuine, even though the importance of their participation is emphasized in the literature. School as a context presents multiple challenges but also numerous benefits for working with children. We examine five projects carried out with children in the school context, and critically consider in which respects this context supports genuine participation of children, in which respects it poses challenges for it, and what this implies for technology design with children. We maintain that researchers need to critically examine the goals set for children's participation: whether they are learning- or material outcome-oriented. This significantly affects the choice of the context for projects.