Working with young people in research is rewarding, even though there are some major challenges one has to encounter if they want to commit to co-productive research domains. In this blog I want to share my and my colleagues experiences, ideas and perspectives on co-production in research. I was working on an international CCC-CATAPULT project (Challenging the Climate Crisis: Children’s Agency to Tackle Policy Underpinned by Learning for Transformation) for almost three years. CCC-Catapult involves researchers and young people from across Tampere (Finland), Bristol (UK), Galway (Ireland) and Genoa (Italy). The focus of the project was to develop knowledge on how young people, their teachers and other educators in four different city regions in Europe are situating and making sense of their lives in relation to the climate crisis. To do this, we examined multiple dimensions, such as social norms, worldviews, emotions and values.
CCC-CATAPULT had a mixed-methods approach, including interviews with teachers and other educators of young people, following a survey, focus groups, and narrative activities combining deep mapping and storyboarding techniques with young people. Because the main goal was to look at climate change through the ‘eyes and ears’ of young people, we wanted to work with young people directly through the whole process with a co-productive research approach. In practice, this led us to recruit a group of young people, called YAPs (Youth Action Partnerships), in each location. YAPs worked with us throughout the process to ensure that the research adequately captured young people’s voices and stories. They came together with researchers to contribute to the development, investigation, implementation, and dissemination of the CCC-CATAPULT.
Leading the co-production group of young people
One of my main tasks was to lead the YAP group in Tampere. We recruited young people aged 15 to 18 years old from the city of Tampere upper secondary and vocational schools, as well as from hobbies such as scouts or religious communities. Primarily we had ten young people however, due to life circumstances, many of them left the study. Some participants moved to another city after their studies while some had many hobbies and interests, and therefore did not have time for the research for two and a half years. We also got two new participants during the study, and last year we spent with an active group of four young people.
YAP members met once a month at least. Young people got to comment on the survey, focus group and interview questions. In Tampere they obtained funding for, organised, and ran an academic panel event for young people and their educators. They analysed and told their perspectives on researchers’ first stage analysis of the data.
Since leading the YAP group alone raised many questions, we gathered to reflect our experiences with other YAP group leaders. Based on our reflections and YAP’s interviews, we wrote an article on co-production. (Portus et al. 2024). I will share some insights based on the article and our reflections. We will also have a tool for researchers to design a co-production research with young people in our web page ccc-catapult.org this spring.
The principles of co-production
Hickley et al. (2018) conducted five principles for co-production: sharing of power, including all perspectives and skills, respecting and valuing the knowledge of all those working together on the research, reciprocity and building and maintaining relationships. As we worked with young people, we saw it was necessary to add three more principles to that list: empowerment and capacity building, extended opportunities (for skills development, engagement and international connections), and ongoing reflection and evaluation. I will discuss a few of the principles in more detail next, especially from the point of view of what we learned.
Sharing of power
It is essential to be aware of the power dynamics, especially in co-production. Working with young people brings another nuance to the power dynamics: Young people are most likely to view the adult researchers as automatically being in a role of authority. And because of their experiences at school, they might be used to giving answers, which the teacher wants to hear. In research, however, it is important to hear all sorts of opinions, so the power dynamics must be addressed.
At the beginning of the project, I tried to level myself with young people. I tried not to use power on them. I tried to make space for them to decide what we should do. Quickly I learned that young people are not ready for the power I gave them. We had to train taking power with little projects, and that is why we decided with the Tampere group to arrange a panel discussion, and the Bristol group decided to design a climate cafe.
At the end of the project, our YAP members told us they would have wanted more strict frameworks for the project. They also struggled with the unknown process of research. They were expecting that we would have had a clear research design, which would be known already at the beginning. We should have told them that research is messy, and we will be wiser at the end of the project. Consequently, YAP’s also said that they learned a lot of research, as things aren’t always carried out like schools’ science books tell them.
Including all perspectives and skills
When the group is conscious of the power dynamics, and there are structures which support the ones who has less power, all perspectives and opinions are more likely to be shared in the process.
We considered inclusion already in the recruitment process, when we tried to reach young people from different backgrounds. Sadly, in Finland we reached only upper secondary school female students to the group. Maybe it was too high of an aim for people from different backgrounds. Many young people are busy with their everyday life, maybe only few have the courage to participate in a research process, and maybe this kind of a research interests only people who are already familiar with such a topic.
If I could have a chance to redesign the recruitment process, I would take time to visit schools and different kind of places where young people are spending their free time, to make my face familiar to them. I would also contact more teachers, since almost all our YAP members were encouraged by their teacher to participate. I think it would be really important to take time for the recruit process, to visit schools.
Respecting and valuing the knowledge of all those working together on the research
In co-production, it is important to make space for team members to share their knowledge. In our survey, YAP members commented on our unfinished survey and noted that it did not include questions on environmental emotions, which were then added to the survey. YAP members saw how their knowledge was relevant to the survey, and they felt that their voice was heard. However, this needs to be kept in focus, as it became clear in the final interviews that YAP members did not always know where their comments ended up and whether they influenced the research. As a researcher, it was easy to ask them for their views and forget to tell them about the implications because the processes are so complex and long term.
Reciprocity
I believe that paying a payment would increase the chances of many people participating in a research project. Many young people are involved in hobbies in their free time and work hard on schoolwork, and some of them even have jobs. Participation in the study often required them to make efforts similar to school work, and it seemed unfair to assume that they would do it purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, participating in the study gave young people many opportunities that they were very happy with. For example, the international meetings between young people were popular and in high demand. In addition, the study gave them opportunities to contribute to society, and one young person said that she understood that she benefited from the study because it benefited society. They learned from doing the research and said that they were proud of the knowledge that the research produced and what they learned from being involved. We gave them job certificates and recommendations for job search, which we hope will be useful. Many of the young people involved became even more interested in climate change during the project and applied for related studies.
Building and maintaining relationships
Building trust is key to enabling members to share and reflect on the knowledge, assumptions, preconceptions, and prejudices they bring to the research project. And perhaps more importantly, trust and relationships are often the main reason why members want to be involved. For young people in particular, peer relationships are really important and it was a pleasure to see how they enjoyed each other’s company. However, for such a development, certain activities had to be planned, such as trust exercises and nice get-togethers: picnics and films. If I were to start a co-production now, I would put a lot of effort into team building at the beginning and only include the study a little later. We built in space for personal reflection, either during meetings or by encouraging both YAP members and researchers to write a reflective diary. Reflection stops are an important part of checking if everybody is feeling alright in the team and with their role.
From doubt to flourishing
The reason why co-productive research methods were developed was discussion and research from developmental psychology. Young people were not seen anymore as incapable. The view of children and young people as immature and in need of adult guidance was questioned (Matthews 1984). This led to a perspective in which young people were studied with rather than on young people (Ansell, 2005; Wyn, Lantz & Harris, 2012). At the beginning of the project, I wanted to see young people as capable, but I approached them as if they already knew a lot. Soon I was faced with kind of disappointment. Are they not capable of doing research? I questioned the co-production: could it even be done with young people if they needed so much guidance? But as the project progressed, I learned that the young people just needed practice in research skills. They were learning and developing and were much more capable at the end of the project than at the beginning. The project had given them many lessons and several of them told us how they felt they had grown as a person because of their involvement. This is already such a significant result of the research that I want to continue to get involved in projects using co-production.
References
Portus, P., Williams, S. J., Mansikka-aho, A., Reilly, K., Aarnio-Linnanvuori, E., de Vito, L., Dillon, B., Fahy, F., Gnecco, I., Palla, A., Sposito, S. & McEwen, L. (2024). Reflections on co-productive research in a youth-focused climate education project. Geographical Research.
Hickey, G., Brearley, S., Coldham, T., Denegri, S., Green, G., Staniszewska, S., Tembo, D., Torok, K., & Turner, K. (2018). Guidance on co-producing a research project. INVOLVE. https://www.invo.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Copro_Guidance_Feb19.pdf
Ansell, N. (2005). Children, Youth and Development. London: Routledge.
Matthews, M. H. (1984). Environmental cognition of young children: images of journey to school and home area. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 89-105.
Wyn, J., Lantz, S., & Harris, A. (2012). Beyond the ‘Transitions’ Metaphor: Family Relations and Young People in Late Modernity. Journal of Sociology, 48(1), 3–22.
Anette Mansikka-aho is a doctoral researcher at the University of Tampere who studies young people’s experiences of climate change in her dissertation. She is interested in environmental emotions, communication and education. Her main area of research is the pedagogical relationships in the era of climate crisis.
Check out the CCC-Catapult project here: https://ccc-catapult.org/
Global Education Research in Finland (GERIF) 