Stop Building For Young People, Start Building With Them.
Discover a five-step framework for youth-adult co-creation. A proven technique for building strong, respectful collaboration with the young people you support.
THE CHALLENGE
Young people have long been shut out of the decision-making process in their educational journey.
While they are the most impacted group, youth have been forced to be passive participants in their learning.
A young person's experience, alone, qualifies them to be included in decisions about education. Their perspective gives them the ability to discern what will be most impactful for their learning.
Young people have hands-on daily exposure to allow for them to identify the challenges and potential solutions in education.
Youth voices have long deserved to be included in the course of their instruction.
Adultcentrism - The Barrier To Youth-Adult Co-Creation?
While young people have the potential to co-create as equals with adults, they have been held back by a pervading belief that adults know better than youth and knowledge comes solely from age.
We call this belief 'adultcentrism'.
There is a responsibility to recognize our own conscious and unconscious adultcentrism beliefs to be able to move past them.
As we move forward, we need to recognize youth voice as an essential asset.
A map towards cross-generational partnership.
The youth-adult co-creation guide establishes the specific steps to eliminating adultcentrism in our actions. It serves as a tool to uplift and use young voices in a positive and productive way.
THE FRAMEWORK
Five Commitments to Implement
Youth-Adult Co-Creation
Young people should have power and influence over anything that directly affects them.
Adultcentrism has restricted youth voice and must be eliminated in designing a supportive environment.
Our collaboration can only be as strong as our relationships.
Young people and adults have vital contributions to enhance any project.
Co-creation requires effort.
You'll discover the five core commitments behind youth-adult co-creation, including aligned practices to follow and hot spots to avoid.
From tokenism to shared decision-making - How the Ladder of Participation leads to collaborative work.
The guide includes tools like the Ladder of Participation to help you make roles and decision rights clear cut.
It provides accountability standards for both parties to follow during the process of co-creation.
It also names the hot spots to avoid: adults seizing power from young people in moments of uncertainty, or deferring roles and responsibilities to young people without conversing.
Adults must be prepared to not only share but cede their power even when it is uncomfortable.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Hot spots that undermine co-creation.
Tokenizing young people and adults by assigning meaningless responsibility.
Dismissing youth comments in a conscious or subconscious indulgence of adultcentrism.
Celebrating youth for things you wouldn't celebrate an adult peer for.
Rushing the process of forming strong, co-creative collaborations.
Holding a static, unchanging view about what co-creation should look like.
LEARN HOW TO IDENTIFY THESE PATTERS, AND THE ALIGNED PRACTICES THAT REPLACE THEM
Our collaboration should be
fulfilling, joyful, identity affirming.
How else will we create learning environments that are?
This guide is a tool to uplift and use young voices in a positive and productive way.
Download the Youth-Adult
Co-Creation Framework
The full guide includes all five commitments, aligned practices, hot spots to avoid, and the Ladder of Participation.
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