Abstract:

Modern teachers frequently complain about a consumer position developed in adolescence, teenagers’ expectations of comfort and well-being devoid of their own involvement in school environment change. Based on the ideas of democratic pedagogy, incl. such projects as “Voice of pupils” (Cremin, H (2011), Mitchell, K. (2012), Halliday, AJ (2019)) and “Practices of co-Participation” (Azbel A. (2019), Konings KD (2014), Jenkins H. (2006)) we conducted a survey-interview to identify the attitude of children to their efforts in changing of their school environment. Throughout the interview, it was found that most students aged 11-17 could not be positioned as extreme consumerists, but rather as willing to participate in the design of the visual environment of the school. However, children from different schools exposed different “emotional entry points” for decision-making regarding their action: some are ready to participate only with friends or with significant adults, some are inclined to do it for a reward, while others just do it for enjoyment and self-realization, etc. It became obvious that teachers needed a quick, ethical diagnostic toolkit that would provide information on how to motivate or correct schoolchildren’s attitudes. Conducting individual interviews needs significant time, whereas standard questionnaires using paper forms are not engaging and often do not provide reliable information.

To solve these contradictions, a digital diagnostic tool was developed - a questionnaire built in the visual logic of comics and game stories based on typical school environment contexts. It was rooted in the idea that a visual dialogue with a modern teenager should be organized in the format of texts of a “new type” (Kazakova E. (2016), i.e. digitized. This increases the interest of teenagers and their desire to provide contextual answers relevant to their school. A visualized digital questionnaire helps a student understand the context of the question, and gives the teacher quick feedback. 185 schoolchildren of 5-11 grades from different schools of the Russian Federation participated in testing the Game Story algorithm and the digital version of the questionnaire. The study showed that 85% of students are willing to independently explore the visual space of the educational institution, as well as participate in changing it with significant adults, in the format of collaborative design. Only 35% of students indicated that they are ready to participate in the transformation of the visual environment provided their friends agree. In the process of testing the questionnaire in the form of a face-to-face interview, we found that the illustrated questionnaire encourages students to emotionally perceive questions, contributing to an increase in their involvement in the reflection on the proposed issue. All teenagers who participated in the piloting of the visual questionnaire expressed a desire to share it with friends on social networks. They placed the questionnaire on their social network pages or texted it through personal messages. Thus, the questionnaire, built as a comic book text and a digital Game Story, allows to quickly identify the “point of emotional entry” of a community of teenagers and draw their attention to changes in the school environment.

Keywords:

School environment design, participation practice, visual dialogue, digital questionnaire.