Organization Description
Erikson Institute is a hub of complex, creative thinking that empowers adults to help children reach their fullest potential. They bring the newest scientific knowledge and theories of children’s development and learning into graduate education, professional training, community programs, and policymaking. Our goal is to improve the lives of children and families.
Impact of SCE Support
Erikson Institute’s two-year pilot research and development project empowers adolescent youth in Evanston, IL to help each other use digital technology in healthy and productive ways. First, a group of 11th grade students will design, conduct, and analyze adolescent focus group data research to understand and document the positive and negative ways in which their peers use, experience, and understand digital technology. From these research results, high school students will work to develop a research-informed peer-to-peer technology mentoring curriculum for 7th grade students.
This project seeks three critical outcomes:
- Honor adolescent voice and experience related to technology use;
- Provide adolescents with research and curriculum development experience that will enhance their digital citizenship competencies;
- Build interpersonal relationships between younger and older adolescents;
Erikson Institute is a member of SCE’s Youth Voice Challenge cohort. This group of exemplary organizations seeks answers to the question: How can young people inspire their peers to use technology in healthy ways and make digital spaces better for everyone? Learn more about the Challenge here.
Why We Invested
Erikson Institute brings a strong peer-to-peer learning approach to this project by training high school students as both researchers and mentors for middle school students. Their research-practice model will bring a strong youth agency component to a field of research where genuine youth voice has been conspicuously absent.
