CoDesign

International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts

ISSN: 1571-0882 (Print) 1745-3755 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ncdn20

Computational empowerment: participatory

design in education

Christian Dindler, Rachel Smith & Ole Sejer Iversen

To cite this article: Christian Dindler, Rachel Smith & Ole Sejer Iversen (2020): Computational
empowerment: participatory design in education, CoDesign, DOI: 10.1080/15710882.2020.1722173

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2020.1722173

Published online: 11 Feb 2020.

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CODESIGN
https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2020.1722173

Computational empowerment: participatory design in

education
Christian Dindler, Rachel Smith and Ole Sejer Iversen
Center for Computational Thinking and Design, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

We propose computational empowerment as an approach and Received 30 May 2019
a Participatory Design (PD) response to challenges related to the Accepted 22 January 2020
emerging need for digital literacy in lower secondary education. KEYWORDS
Our approach extends the current focus on computational thinking Computational
to include a concern for how children and youth are empowered empowerment; participatory
through constructive, analytical and critical engagement with tech- design; education
nology. We argue that PD has the potential to drive a computational
empowerment agenda in education by connecting political PD with
contemporary visions for addressing a future digitised labour market
and society. We provide a model for understanding and engaging
with computational empowerment and report on the emergence of
the computational empowerment agenda in a Danish context and
how this agenda is reflected in the newly developed curriculum for
a course on technology comprehension running on trial basis in 46
schools across Denmark.

1. Introduction
Digitisation is rapidly changing the labour market, everyday lives and societies at large.
During the past decade, increasing attention has been given to children’s digital compe-
tence in order for them to fit a highly digitised and automatised future work market.
Moreover, a deep understanding of digital technology has been voiced as a necessity for
understanding society in the 21st century. Consequently, computational thinking (CT) is
being introduced into education to provide children with a basic understanding of
algorithms, decomposition and pattern recognition. Most often, CT is implemented
into educational programmes with a strong focus on Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM). As much as CT is relevant for understanding programming
and computer models, it fundamentally lacks a critical and reflective stance towards
digitised society; further, it lacks an agenda of empowering children to understand and
make informed choices about technology and participate in technological development.
In this paper, we suggest that participatory design (PD) should engage with the CT
agenda that is currently being implemented in educational contexts. We propose com-
putational empowerment (CE) as a PD alternative, focusing on how children can build
their understanding of technology and their agency in a digitised world. CT, at large,
promotes the idea that children and young people need to be taught the basic principles

CONTACT Christian Dindler dindler@cavi.au.dk

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. DINDLER ET AL.

of decomposing, analysing and creating solutions to problems in such a way that

computers can process them. Based on this idea, children and youth across the world
are currently learning programming skills and the basics of algorithms and data struc-
tures. The rationale for introducing CT is that children, and adults, live in a digitised
world where computation pervades almost everything and, hence, everyone needs to
understand the mechanisms of computation. While this aim seems sound and admirable,
we believe there is a wider concern that follows digitalisation that calls for a broader view
of technology and its implications on our everyday lives and society. With PD’s historical
and political attention to engaging communities in processes of technology development,
learning and empowerment, we argue that PD is in a position to respond to this
challenge.
We frame CE as a concern for how children are empowered to make critical and
informed decisions about the role of technology in their lives. CE shifts focus from
programming skills as an end in themselves towards providing children and young
people with the means necessary to take part in technological development. Where
CT is primarily occupied with understanding the concept of computing, CE seeks to
engage children in broader questions such as the following: How does digital tech-
nology challenge our democratic rights and civic engagement? How are digital
technologies altering our personal relations and our everyday practices? How do we
interpret intentions embedded in everyday technology and how can every child
partake in society by remixing, redesigning or creating digital technology that is
more attuned to visions for a better future? In addressing these questions, under-
standing the logics of computing is obviously important, but it is not sufficient. We
define computational empowerment as the process in which children and youth, as
individuals and groups, develop the skills, insights and reflexivity needed to under-
stand digital technology and its effect on their lives and society at large, and their
capacity to engage critically and curiously with the construction and deconstruction
of technology.
We argue that PD has a lot to offer in terms of driving an agenda related to children’s
education concerning technology and digitalisation. We highlight three reasons in parti-
cular. First, PD has a long history of engaging in processes aimed at developing new
insights, skills, visions and democratic awareness among people through their engagement
with design and technology. The early PD projects in particular reflected these political
commitments and sought to empower future users to take part in technological develop-
ment and have a place at the bargaining table (Bjerknes et al. 1987). Second, PD has
a substantial catalogue of approaches, methods and practices for how people can develop
these skills and insights through participatory engagement in design activities. Third, PD
offers approaches for understanding how challenges, such as empowering children to live in
a digitalised society, require engagement on several levels, reaching from political arenas to
everyday activities in schools.
This paper is structured so as to unfold CE in principle and practice. The paper starts
by reviewing the literature and practices around CT in education before introducing the
main principles of CE. In the final sections of the paper we discuss how CE is reflected in
the course on technology comprehension running on trial in Danish upper secondary
education (2019–2021) and identify the challenges it presents to CE.
 CODESIGN 3

2. Computational thinking for 21st century learners

Computational Thinking is a concept attracting much attention but with little agreement
about its definition (Barr and Stephenson 2011; Brennan and Resnick 2012; Lee et al.
2011). A popular definition is to define CT as ‘the thought processes involved in
formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in
a form that can be effectively carried out by an information -processing agent’ (Cuny,
Snyder, and Wing 2010). CT is closely linked to an American approach to STEM
education that is currently being infused, with some cultural adaptations, into teaching
programmes world-wide. The federal CSforALL programme (www.csforall.org) in the
US is an attempt to bring CT to all children nationwide. Similarly, the Computer Science
Framework (www.k12cs.org) offers an essential set of computer science concepts and
practices evolving around CT. The Cool Think project in Hong Kong (www.coolthink.
hk) also develops its core thinking from CT and from the ideas of computational practices
and computational perspectives (Brennan and Resnick 2012). A report from the European
Commission finds that the integration of CT, and more broadly of computer science in
compulsory education, is evident across the European educational systems (Bocconi et al.
2016). Eleven countries have incorporated CT into compulsory subjects, while seven
countries are planning to introduce CT into education. Finally, seven other countries are
integrating CT by building on their long- standing tradition in Computer Science
education, in some places also including primary and lower secondary levels (ibid.).
As CT is rapidly brought into global educational programmes, we must critically
reflect on the skills and competences acquired from this kind of teaching and consider
whether CT sufficiently covers the requirements for computational skills, competences
and digital citizenship. Cuny, Snyder, and Wing (2010) argue that CT for everyone
means being able to (1) understand what aspects of a problem are amenable to computa-
tion, (2) evaluate the match between computational tools and techniques and a problem,
(3) understand the limitations and power of computational tools and techniques, (4)
apply or adapt a computational tool or technique to a new use, (5) recognise an
opportunity to use computation in a new way and (6) apply computational strategies
such as ‘divide and conquer‘ in any domain. According to Cuny, Snyder, and Wing
(2010), CT primarily addresses capacities to understand, apply and evaluate computa-
tional phenomena. Brennan and Resnick (2012) have proposed a broader understanding
of CT to also encompass other perspectives. They suggest a framework for CT consisting
of computational concepts (the concepts designers employ as they program), computa-
tional practices (the practices designers develop as they program), and computational
perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about
themselves). In Brennan and Resnick’s framework, they acknowledge CT as a social
phenomenon with broader consequences for society at large. This is also found in the
work of Kafai and Burke (2013), who envision CT in terms of computational participa-
tion to emphasise that ‘objects -to -think -with’ to use one of Papert’s key ideas- are
indeed ‘objects -to -share -with’ others (Kafai and Burke 2013).
Within digital making literature, CT is treated somewhat differently. Schelhowe
(2013) argues for digital making in K12 classrooms to strengthen children’s ‘Bildung’
(self- cultivation) and to provide them with the resources to become digital citizens
through processes of digital fabrication. This approach is supported by Blikstein (2013),
4 C. DINDLER ET AL.

who argues for a democratisation of innovation by bringing digital technologies into the
hands of school children. According to Blikstein (2016), student projects related to digital
technology should be deeply connected with meaningful problems, either at a personal or
community level, making designing solutions to those problems both educational and
empowering (Blikstein 2016). The aspects of ‘Bildung’, democratisation and empower-
ment, through equal access to digital fabrication resources, are not found in CT frame-
works or in the description of educational programmes in relation to programming or
digital technology.
The notion of CE that we discuss in this paper extends the trajectories of democratisation,
empowerment and providing children with the opportunity to develop their capacity for
engaging with technology found in the work of Blikstein (2016) and Schelhowe (2013). In the
following, we discuss why we believe that PD is a suitable candidate for driving this agenda.

3. Empowerment, children and learning in PD

As described in the introduction, we believe that there are at least three interrelated
reasons that PD has the potential to drive a CE agenda in education. This section is
structured around these three reasons. First, PD has a track record of responding to the
introduction of technology by emphasising the need for learning, skill-development
and empowerment. While the current focus on programming and the increased
introduction of fabrication technologies in schools might seem a distant relative of
the challenges facing unions and workers in the early days of PD, there are funda-
mental parallels in terms of the inherent challenges and possible responses. Unions
were faced by top-down processes of introducing technology and a situation where
workers, in general, lacked the knowledge and organisation necessary to understand
and pose demands for technology (Bansler 1989). Similarly, today, children in general
have a very limited understanding of technology in terms of its current and potential
role in their lives and have few means to develop this understanding through their
educational practices. In the early Scandinavian projects, the approach chosen was not
simply to design new technologies that were more attuned to the needs of workers.
Rather, the collaborative efforts were aimed at mutual learning where unions and
workers developed knowledge about technology in order to pose more qualified
demands. While tangible products and concepts also emerged from the collaborations,
the most important outcomes were, arguably, the skills and insights developed that
empowered unions and workers to take part in technological development more
broadly. Hence, much of the material emerging from the projects (e.g. DEMOS,
DUE, UTOPIA) was educational content and reports that documented local experi-
ences with technology introduction (Bjerknes et al. 1987). While it has been argued that
PD’s political engagement has declined (e.g. Kyng 2015), it remains evident in PD’s
history and is, arguably, alive and well in new guises that have gained traction in recent
years; the creation of ‘commons’ (Teli, Di Fiore, and D’Andrea 2017) and publics
(Huybrechts, Dreessen, and Hagenaars 2018) carry with them the concern for demo-
cratic approaches to development and empowering local communities to act in
a political landscape. We believe that PD’s insistence on responding to top-down
technological processes with initiatives that provide people with skills, knowledge
and agency makes it highly relevant within contemporary debates of digitalisation.
 CODESIGN 5

Our second reason for suggesting PD’s candidacy is that PD has a substantial
catalogue of methods, techniques and practices not only for co-designing technology
but for supporting (mutual) learning. The catalogue reflects PD’s engagement with
a wealth of aspects relating to participatory practices and their outcomes and dynamics.
In terms of scope, PD research spans from the micro-dynamics of participatory
sessions to the shaping of relations (Light and Akama 2012) and giving voice to values
(Leong and Robertson 2016). Moreover, the PD literature documents an array of
different ways of arranging participatory work, and using various materials (see
Sanders, Brandt, and Binder 2010,; Simonsen and Robertson 2012 for overviews).
The PD catalogue reflects a long – term engagement with the principles and practices
of participatory work, and demonstrate how methods and practices can be aligned with
political and ethical agendas that often pervade PD initiatives (Iversen and Dindler
2013). Also, considerable work relates specifically to PD and children, most notably
connected to the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community and research field.
Here, the PD engagement continues to be a prominent topic, with a considerable
expansion in recent years relating to PD methods for children (see Walsh et al. 2013
for overview), addressing issues such as PD in schools (Barendregt et al. 2016) and
children with special needs (Makhaeva, Frauenberger, and Spiel 2016). Further, values
and PD’s political commitments have been developed in the context of engaging with
children (e.g. Iversen, Smith, and Dindler 2017). In sum, PD and neighbouring
disciplines, have a well-developed catalogue of methods and practices, many of which
are aligned with PD’s ethos and political agendas.
The third reason that supports PD’s candidacy is that PD has a relatively well-
developed discourse for articulating how complex challenges, such as that of CE,
require work across political arenas and involvement of diverse stakeholders and
institutions. Considering the challenge of preparing children for a digitalised society,
it is evident that this requires efforts that stretch from local initiatives to top-tier
political levels, and that efforts can be scaled up and down. In many countries, this
will also involve dialogue and collaboration with technology providers and NGOs. The
issue of supporting work between diverse stakeholders has been a hallmark of PDC,
and the importance of scaling and maintaining results across power structures and
political arenas also has a long history (Gärtner and Wagner 1994). Recent contribu-
tions emphasise issues such as effects in the organisational implementation of technol-
ogy (Hertzum and Simonsen 2010), ‘institutioning’ of PD initiatives in the public realm
(Huybrechts, Benesch, and Geib 2017) and long-term sustainability and scaling
(Iversen and Dindler 2014; Smith and Iversen 2018) of PD work between community,
institutional and political levels.
The three reasons provided here are closely connected and reflect essential aspects of
PD. Indeed, it is arguably a reason in itself for PD’s candidacy that it provides a more or
less coherent approach that stretches from the arrangement and micro-dynamics of
participatory work to overarching issues related to influencing political arenas and the
sustainability of project achievements. In the following section, we expand on the notion
of CE by providing a brief background and introducing three models that illustrate the
principles and activities that we believe are central to CE.
6 C. DINDLER ET AL.

4. Computational empowerment
The starting point for our work on CE as a PD response to the challenges of digitalisation
was the Danish Fablab@School project which combined participatory research and
community development for sustainable change (Smith and Iversen 2018). Through
long-term engagement with diverse stakeholders including students, teachers, lab lea-
ders, local and national policy makers, we explored the core challenges and potentials of
integrating digital technologies into educational contexts. The cornerstone of the project
was an inclusive participatory process intersecting the agendas between our research
project and a regional development project. The research project was carried out by
a small interdisciplinary research group at Aarhus University, in collaboration with four
municipalities in the Eastern region of Jutland, Denmark. Based on the global
FabLab@School concept developed at Stanford University, the Danish project added
a strong Scandinavian PD approach to the STEM – oriented focus on constructivist
maker technology in education. The objective for the research project was to explore and
develop the concept of digital design literacy, coining the technological aspects of digital
fabrication and literacy with a PD approach into the educational domain. The target
group was upper primary and lower secondary schools with students of 11–15y within
newly established subjects such as FabLab, Craft and Design, but also interdisciplinary
teaching contexts. The research explored the central qualities and dynamics of design
literacy for children, and how this core competence could be scaffolded through con-
structive and critical processes of digital design (Smith, Iversen, and Hjorth 2015). The
results from the project were manifold, including large-scale surveys of children’s devel-
opment of digital literacy, the establishment of numerous fabrication labs in the parti-
cipating municipalities, the development of teacher education programmes in digital
fabrication through which approximately 17.000 students and 1.200 teachers gained first-
hand experience with digital fabrication and design. The insights developed through the
Fablab@School project (see Smith, Iversen, and Hjorth 2015; Smith and Iversen 2018;
Iversen, Smith, and Dindler 2017; Iversen, Dindler, and Smith 2019) forms the basis for
the articulation of CE and the models presented in the following sections.

5. Modelling computational empowerment

CE promotes a critical, constructive and reflexive stance towards technology and this
requires children to engage in both constructive and analytical activities (Iversen, Smith,
and Dindler 2018). Here we unfold CE using a model (Figure 1) to show how this
engagement with technology may be understood and communicated. The model is based
on the work in the Danish Fablab@School project and integrates core aspects of political
PD by materialising the idea that children should be provided with more than the means
of programming; they should be provided with the means for engaging critically with
how technology is imbued with values, how it shapes our lives and how we may act to
change it. The purpose of the model is to provide a simple and generic understanding of
the ways in which students can engage with technology and the fundamental challenges
and skills that are needed.
The model depicts the basic relationship between one or more students (Figure 1 left),
digital technology (Figure 1, middle) and other people (Figure 1, right). There are basically
 CODESIGN 7

Figure 1. The two archetypical roles students may adopt in relation to digital technology (From
Iversen, Dindler, and Smith 2019. Graphics by Tom Kristensen).

two roles that students may take on in their engagement with technology and these roles are
reflected in the arrows moving back and forth. In the first role, students themselves engage
in the construction of technology for others (upper arrows moving left to right). This
process requires engagement in at least two overarching topics. First, the construction of
digital technology requires students to understand technology as a material that can be
shaped and moulded through programming and physical computing. More generally, it
requires skills in terms of understanding how phenomena and problems can be presented
in ways that can be processed by a computer. To a large extent this relates to the well-known
areas of computational thinking and programming skills. Second, as students construct
technologies and applications for other people they need to relate to these people and their
everyday practices, needs and experiences. How technology is purposefully constructed for
a concrete situation and for specific people is the essence of design and creating the
necessary knowledge is the aim of the design process. The second topic thus deals with
issues of doing design research, developing empathy for users, prototyping and testing.
These issues are rarely found in the school curricula related to computing and computa-
tional thinking.
In the second role (Figure 1, right), the perspective is shifted and the students engage
with technology that other people (designers and corporations) have designed for them to
use. This process is described by the lower arrows moving from right to left in the model
(Figure 1). Adopting this role requires for the students to engage in analytical and
reflective activities exploring how technology is designed, how it is used, and how it
affects our lives as individuals, groups and as a society. This engagement stretches from
scrutinising how hardware and software is constructed, to studying people’s actual use of
the technology and how technologies reflects certain values and interests.
Taken together, the two roles and the activities they invite reflect our concern for
engaging students in both constructing and deconstructing technology and for exploring
how technology affects our lives and how it may be moulded to suit our desired purposes
8 C. DINDLER ET AL.

and futures. In practice, the roles will of course overlap and be intertwined in processes of
design and analyses. The model and the double move depicted by the arrows thus provide
a simple way of conceptualising and reflecting on computational empowerment.

6. A process model of computational empowerment

The two roles can be further described in terms of the activities they involve. The first role
(construction and design) is fundamentally concerned with the act of coding understood
broadly as the way in which intentionality is materialised in technological artefacts
through design and complex problem solving. The second role may be understood as
acts of decoding where the challenge is to describe, analyse, and reflect upon the way in
which other people and corporations have materialised intentions in technology. Here,
we use two circular models to describe the activities involved in coding (Figure 2) and
decoding (Figure 3). Figure 2 was developed through the activities of the FabLab@School
(Smith and Iversen 2018) and the complementary Figure 3 was developed subsequently
in an effort to capture analytical and reflective activities and in conjunction with the
curricula development for a new course in Technology Comprehension (see below). The
purpose of the circular arrangement of the activities is to suggest that they may be
conducted iteratively and that individual activities may inform each other.
The process model describing coding and the activities involved in design and con-
struction (Figure 2) comprise activities that are generally well described in the design
literature including research, ideation and construction. The activities of argumentation
and reflection, more than anything, separate this model from most design models. They
are important because the objective for the students’ engagement in design is not to make

Figure 2. Activities involved in design and construction (coding).

 CODESIGN 9

Figure 3. Activities involved in analysing digital artefacts (decoding).

commercially viable products for a customer but to gain first-hand insights into how
technology can be constructed purposefully. Argumentation and reflection prompt
students to consider how the technology that they have designed will affect people and
how their findings from the design process is reflected in the results. Moreover, the design
brief and research activities extend a focus on complex problem solving and exploration
in real-life contexts that are rarely present in educational curricula and invite for cross-
disciplinary teaching and collaboration (see Iversen, Dindler, and Smith 2019).
The second model depicts the principle of decoding (Figure 3). This model also deals
with design but it describes the activities involved in analysing and reflecting upon the
artefacts that other people or organisations have designed, in order to better understand
their qualities and significance. In essence, the six activities are areas of inquiry and
research for students to engage in. Technology analysis looks at the material properties of
a given artefact in terms of its output, input and the materials used (hardware and
software). Inquiries concerning purpose are related to the question of the intended use of
the artefact; what does it invite the user to do and which activities is it meant to support?
Use brings attention to how the artefact is actually used as part of everyday life. Here
students are challenged to observe and interview people using an artefact and gain
insights into their experiences. Value concerns how a given artefact reflects or fore-
grounds certain values or interest and promotes particular worldviews and assumptions.
Impact focuses on the influence that the artefacts asserts on or lives as individuals and as
a society. This may be explored through desk research or discussing the historical
evolution and implications of technology. Finally, argumentation looks at the arguments
that the producer of the artefact provides for its use. Often, an analysis of any given
10 C. DINDLER ET AL.

artefact will be conducted by engaging with several of these activities and perhaps
exploring and discussing the relationship between, for example, how the producer of
the artefacts describes the qualities of the product (argumentation) and how the product
is actually used (use). Or perhaps students reflect on how the artefacts purpose reflects
certain values (value) in relation to its impact on society (impact).
The two models represent two ways of engaging with digital technology; the first
engages students in construction and design and the second engages students in analys-
ing and reflecting on the technology that is designed by other people. While principles of
computational thinking and programming are certainly important in both models, these
activities complement and extend the STEM – inspired focus with activities aimed at
training students in exploring more broadly the significance of technology in their lives
and society. Having unfolded the main principles and activities of CE we now turn
attention to how the CE agenda is materialed in practice; in our case, in a newly
developed course on Technology comprehension in Danish primary and lower second-
ary school.

7. Computational empowerment at school

In 2018, the Danish Ministry of Education mandated the development of mandatory
course on ‘Technology comprehension’ scheduled to run on trial basis in 46 Danish
schools from 2019. The mandate revolved around topics similar to the ones addressed in
the Fablab@School project, including digital fabrication skills, design processes, digital
literacy and computational thinking. A commissariat of appointed teachers, researchers
and policy makers took part in developing the curriculum for the course during a six-
month period. Based on the work and results from the FabLab@School project and its
regional impact, one of the authors was invited to co-lead the development, while another
author was involved as part of the working group. The curriculum developed for the
Ministry of Education contains four overarching areas of knowledge and competence (in
Danish: ‘Videns- og Kompetenceområder’) (Ministry of Education 2018) that must be
leveraged in the course:

● Digital empowerment focuses on how digital artefacts are imbued with values and
intentions and how these artefacts shape our lives as individuals, groups and as
a society. As such, digital empowerment is concerned with the ethics of digital
artefacts and promotes an analytical and critical approach to digital transformation.
● Digital design and design processes focuses on the processes through which digital
artefacts are created and the choices that designers have to make in these processes.
The focus is on iterative processes driven by research and continuous reflection. It is
specifically highlighted that students must develop their ability to work with com-
plex problems and to argue for the choices in their design process.
● Computational thinking concerns the students’ ability to model phenomena in the
world in such a way that they can be subjected to computational processes and
create new meaning or understanding of a problem or situation. This includes the
ability to analyse, model and structure data and to produce algorithms with the
intention of understanding or redesigning situations or digital artefacts.
 CODESIGN 11

● Technological ability1 focuses on the abilities and mastery to express computa-

tional ideas in digital artefacts. This includes the ability to use computer systems, the
language associated with these and to express ideas through programming. Working
within this area aims at providing students with the experience and abilities needed
to make informed choices about the use of digital tools and technologies.

The four areas of knowledge and competence developed relate closely to the fundamental
issues we outlined for a CE agenda above. At a glance, it would appear that many of the
core CE ideas have actually been materialised in the curricula for Danish lower secondary
education. However, there are at least three outstanding issues in terms of actually
achieving the goals of empowering children and the extent to which CE is actually
materialised in the curriculum.
First, it may be noted that three out of the four areas described in the curricula deal
primarily with the movement from left to right described in model 1; the processes in which
children themselves design and construct (with) technology. Computational thinking and
Technological ability reflect well known CT topics relating to programming and under-
standing decomposition, algorithms and data structures. The area of Digital design and
design processes, marks an addition to traditional CT by focusing on the choices made in
design and the need for iteration, reflection and argumentation. While it may be argued
that focusing on design processes and the way in which intentionality is embedded in
technology through design provides children with a more general understanding of
technology and its impacts, the way in which this area of knowledge and competence has
been realised in the course on Technology comprehension has, so far, focused largely on
engaging students in design processes, generating design ideas and rough prototypes
(Tuhkala et al. 2019). Opposite, little attention has been paid to addressing knowledge
and competences that deal systematically with the movement from right to left in Figure 1,
where children are provided with the vocabulary and skills needed to analyse, discuss and
reflect on the role of technology in their lives. As such, it may be argued that the main focus
of new initiatives, in practice, leans more towards activities where children themselves
design, build and construct with technology. While these activities are surely beneficial, the
risk is that too little emphasis is put on the technology that is already shaping our society
and that the full potential of a comprehensive approach to CE, as we have defined it, will not
be realised in parallel with the digitalisation of society. By analogy, when children are taught
literature, they are not only asked to write their own short stories, but read the work of
others, are taught the skills and tools to analyse different literary genres and discuss how
literature has affected society and evolved throughout history. The argument could be made
that a similar balance should be struck as we educate new generations in technology that is
rapidly transforming our society.
Second, while the tools, methods, and practices around design and programming are quite
well developed, the resources available for children to analyse, understand and critique the role
of existing technology are more sparse. Within computer science, substantial efforts have been
made to make computational ideas and practices available to children, ranging from high –
level programming languages to easy-to-use construction kits for physical computing. These
have been fuelled not least by the global interest in making computer science available to
a broad audience such as CSforALL, K12CS and CoolThink. Looking at the areas of digital
design, design processes and digital empowerment these have not enjoyed a similar
12 C. DINDLER ET AL.

proliferation beyond universities and design schools. As noted earlier, research in the PD and
IDC communities has explored how children can take part in design but rarely have methods,
tools and frameworks been developed for educational purposes. This is particularly the case
when it comes to resources that children can use to analyse, understand and reflect on the role
of technology. In these areas, very few resources are available for teachers and children.
Third, in the Danish context there is a significant challenge relating to a lack of
knowledge, experience and expertise among teachers. For most teachers, Technology
comprehension, design and digital empowerment is unknown territory. Moreover, the
teachers’ colleges have, thus far, provided little in terms of educating new teachers to
leverage the task. This challenge will likely face other countries that engage with pro-
grammes similar to the Danish Technology comprehension.
While the four areas of knowledge and competence certainly reflect core ideas of CE
and, as such, are promising in terms of materialising a PD – inspired approach to
technology, there are significant challenges. In the final section, we reflect on PD’s
potential to drive the CE agenda and outline avenues of future work.

8. Discussion
We have proposed CE as a PD inspired response to challenges related to digitalisation of
society and the emerging need for digital literacy in education. As our PD approach to the
FabLab@School project demonstrated, PD has the potential to drive CE in education re-
accentuating the empowerment agenda from projects deriving from the labour market
30–40 years ago. We have provided three reasons why PD has the potential to further drive
this CE agenda. First, PD has a track record of responding to the introduction of technology
by emphasising the need for learning, skill development and empowerment. Second, PD
has a substantial catalogue of methods, techniques and practices not only for co-designing
technology but for supporting learning. Finally, PD has a relatively well – developed
discourse for articulating how complex challenges, such as that of CE, require work across
political arenas and involvement of diverse stakeholders.
A fruitful place for PD to start might well be the need for local development of the ideas
of digital design and digital empowerment among teachers, students and local commu-
nities. While the curricula for the course on Technology comprehension reflects a CE
agenda there is a need for appropriating and developing these ideas so that they work as
part of everyday educational practices. As noted earlier, there is a particular need for
ensuring a balance between the activities in which the students themselves design and
construct technology and the activities in which they analyse, reflect and deconstruct
existing technology. Thus, there is a need for developing, testing and disseminating models
that can help students and teachers analyse and reflect on existing technologies from their
everyday lives. We have provided a suggestion for one such model (Figure 3) but more
diversity is needed and research to explore the challenges and benefits of such models.
For PD research, CE offers several challenges. Generally, there is a need for PD
research that shifts focus from the acts and configuration of co-design activitity to
studying and exploring how people are empowered to autonomously and critically
engage in the development of digital artefacts. Also, if PD is to engage with a CE agenda
and take on the responsibility of empowering children in a digitalised society, PD will
likely be required to document its merits to people and policy makers outside research
 CODESIGN 13

communities. This requires research efforts to engage directly in the politics of connect-
ing diverse stakeholders and institutions, from the classroom to government level, as
a premise for our research initiatives, while documenting the outcomes and effects of
such PD efforts to a wider audience (Bossen, Dindler, and Iversen 2016). While research-
ers and practitioners may argue that evidence of PD merits can be found in PD research
papers, it would likely prove difficult to find existing documentation that could convince
policy makers to opt for a PD approach. Hence, more rigorous documentation practices
are needed and a commitment to articulating long – term results and sustainable societal
impact in a way that is accessible for people outside of the community.

9. Conclusion
We have proposed CE as a concern for how children and youth are empowered to make
critical and informed decisions about the role of technology in their lives. We have further
unfolded the principles of CE in three models that describe the grounding principles and
the coding and decoding activities in which children may engage. CE shifts focus from
programming skills as an end in themselves, towards providing children and young people
with the means necessary to engage actively in technological development. By emphasising
computational empowerment as a vision for technology education, we repurpose the scope
of current technology education (such as CT), from one of providing children with STEM
competences to one of empowering children to live meaningful lives in a highly digitalised
world, providing them with the means to actively engage in co – constructing the future. In
a Danish context, the course on Technology comprehension embodies several of the ideas
of computational empowerment, but we argue that challenges remain in terms of balancing
construction and analysis and locally developing the ideas of CE to suit educational and
societal contexts.

Note
1. In Danish: ‘Teknologisk handleevne’. ‘Handleevne’ could arguably be translated more
precisely as ‘ability to act’ or ‘capacity to act’. Here we use ‘Technological ability’ for brevity.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by VILLUM FONDEN [grant no. 28831].

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