Shifting roles and slow research: children’s roles in participatory co-design of critical machine learning activities and technologies

Tolulope Famaye, Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens and Ibrahim Adisa

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2025, vol. 44, issue 5, 912-933

Abstract: Including children’s voices in the design of learning activities and technologies has increasingly become a subject of conversation among researchers and learning designers. Research suggests children have lived experiences that position them as useful contributors in co-designing curricula activities or technologies they will use. However, one significant challenge in participatory co-design is engaging children in the co-design of curricula when they have not yet learned the disciplinary content within the curricula. We present our two-year participatory design-based research study in which we co-designed a Critical Machine Learning educational programme with different groups of children at two after-school centres over two consecutive years. In this paper, we characterize the roles children embodied in two cycles of participatory co-design and how the program's activities impacted these roles. Findings in this study suggest that in two participatory design-based research cycles, children embodied different roles of tester, informant, or designer of both AI learning activities and AI technologies. Based on this design-based research study, we propose that a ‘slow research’ approach that emphasises trust-building and a deep understanding of children's perspectives can be instrumental in achieving meaningful co-design outcomes.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2024.2313147

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