“When we were doing that [Coding Club]… I just couldn't wait for Friday”: creating space for agency and fun within school-based research and design

Despite increasing adoption of neurodiversity-informed approaches, the views and capabilities of autistic children and young people are often downplayed in both educational research and practice. Consequently, this study focused on the experiences of autistic and other neurodivergent young people engaging in collaborative research and design within the context of a weekly coding club. Within the coding club, students contributed to the co-design of a computer game, while creating digital stories about their experiences. Digital stories are short videos about students’ educational experiences, that focus on students’ agency and strengths. The two videos presented here offer insights into both the output of collaborative design work and the process of doing it. The first video shows footage of gameplay from the co-designed game, while the second video is an example a digital story, created by two of the students involved in the study. Together, the two videos show the students’ agency and the fun they experienced, serving as examples of what is possible when autistic and other neurodivergent students are given the space to choose how they use their strengths to engage with learning activities centred around technology-focused co-production.