Hello,
Welcome to Kids Co-designing Healthy Places. This website will support you in getting your students involved in co-researching and co-designing healthier communities.
KCDHP is a cross-curriculum project that is a rich learning task. You’re encouraged to do this project alongside local councils as they develop their community plans and strategies, including their Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plans. You can also adapt this project to get kids involved in working on school-based health and wellbeing initiatives.
Read on to learn more about KCDHP and the role of co-design in decision making.
Co-design treats everyday users as experts in the design of the processes, services or objects that affect them. Click here to watch an introductory overview from VicHealth about the value of co-design.
In education, co-design fosters cooperation between young people, teachers and leadership teams, and external agencies. Co-designing with students has been successfully applied in Australian and international schools to develop better learning environments and create new and more responsive curricula.
The key principle of co-design – to deliver effective, user-oriented services through collaboration – aligns with core educational policy and practices. Well-facilitated co-design engages young voices for change.
Co-design connects with a number of teaching approaches used in schools, including inquiry-based learning, collaborative learning approaches, student voice and critical and participatory pedagogies.
Co-design offers a range of additional benefits for schools:
- It allows students to experience greater buy-in and ownership, in their learning and towards the school environment.
- It can increase students’ motivation to learn.
- It allows for a greater range of ideas to be explored, which often leads to innovative designs and better problem solving.
- It helps teachers and other adults better understand the key issues affecting young people and how they interpret and understand these issues.