Incorporating Multiple Perspectives Into the Design of Youth Co-Research: Listening to Teens, Library Staff and Researchers

In this talk, Rachel M. Magee introduces Young Researchers, an Institute of Museum and Library Services Early Career Development funded project, which collaborates with teens to design, conduct, analyze and present original research on youth technology and information practices. In the project’s current stage, we are connecting findings from research with various stakeholders to inform the design of these original research experiences.

By incorporating the perspectives and priorities of teens, youth services providers in public libraries, and researchers from multiple fields and career stages, as well as our own pilot research, we are building a model for innovative research engagement with youth that has implications for both informal learning and scholarly understandings of youth technology use.

This talk will highlight key insights from work with these stakeholders, discuss implications for research with and on youth, and share findings on youth social media use and literacy learning. The talk concludes with discussion of the next stage of the project, focused on collaborating with five partner libraries across the US to implement and study the Young Researchers approach with up to 100 teens (twenty at each location).

Rachel M. Magee is a youth advocate and assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work in the School of Information Sciences is informed by her background as a librarian, and focuses on youth, the ways they interact with technology in everyday life, and resulting implications for their engagement with information. Magee has a PhD in information studies from Drexel University, a master's in information resources and library science from the University of Arizona, a BS in radio-television-film and a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about her at www.rachelmagee.net.