By Ciara Kenneally
Learning By Doing aims to create and adapt evidence-based citizen science programs for students, to better engage them in science education. Our first step in realising this goal involves understanding the experiences of key stakeholders (teachers, project leaders, etc.) who have used citizen science in Australian schools.
In this blog, I will discuss finding from my honours thesis analysis (which has just been submitted!), engaging our first group of stakeholders – Australian citizen science project leaders. We conducted a serious of focus groups (guided group conversations) with 17 project leaders from across a range of scientific disciplines, who have worked within Australian schools. It was great to have such a diversity within participants – this meant we could learn from a range of projects and synthesise these experiences to be representative of Australian school citizen science.
Focus groups provided a wonderful opportunity for project leaders to share and compare their experiences working on citizen science in schools. Key themes were identified from these discussions ascribing to the many learning opportunities of implementing citizen science in schools. Two key elements discussed by project leaders, were the advantages they observed and challenges experienced from engaging students in their citizen science project.
Advantages for citizen science in schools
The advantages for citizen science participation for students is represented in the image below. We classified these as enablers, engagers or enactors. The categories flow on from each other where enablers can support engagers which can promote enactors.
An enabler is a factor that supports student participation in citizen science. An example of an enabler is the ability for students to participate in authentic research, that can make an impact. This was mentioned as a motivator for both students and teachers to get involved in citizen science.
Engages are aspects of participation that increase student engagement. The most frequently mentioned advantage for students in our focus groups was learning. Project leaders said that through citizen science participation, students can learn both sciences and areas beyond science (depending on the project, this could be in areas like art or mathematics). This increased learning opportunity is a primary motivator for Learning By Doing, as we look to expand our programs and involvement of students in citizen science.
The final category of enactors, describes factors that empower students beyond their current citizen science participation. A powerful example is the ability for students to create change – project leaders often mentioned this was accomplished through communication of their scientific findings to create more awareness within their communities.
Challenges for citizen science in schools
We found a number of advantages for citizen science, but during our discussions with project leaders they also mentioned a number of challenges they faced when running their projects in schools. Challenges range from the more personal challenges for project leaders and/or teachers to broader systemic challenges for the implementation of citizen science within the education system. Personal challenges for project leaders or schools are indicated in the specific circles in the image below (orange for projects; blue for schools), with joint challenges represented in the shared area.
This image describes the following themes we identified during the analysis of project leader focus groups.
- Citizen science project leaders may not have the necessary resources and knowledge to run school projects
- Balancing the science and education goals of citizen science projects may result in compromises in school settings
- Connecting and collaborating with teachers can be difficult when teachers are unfamiliar with citizen science, or project leaders are unfamiliar with schools
- Citizen science projects do not always align well with formal curriculum
- Student online and physical safety is an important consideration for projects, as it can impact the scope of projects
- Time is a scare resource for teachers
- Varied teacher confidence in science means teachers may require extra assistance to run projects.
It’s been extremely rewarding to hear about the advantages of citizen science participation for students, and really supports why we’re running this project. However, our work here at LBD is only beginning. As we’ve identified several challenges for citizen science implementation, it is now time to work with projects and teachers to overcome these. Both factors will be investigated further during the scoping stages of our research with other key stakeholders like teachers and educational designers, to achieve a greater understanding of how we can overcome them.
These findings have recently been presented at the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA) conference, and are summarised in a participant report. I’d like to say a huge thank you to all of the participants involved in this research, who gave up their very valuable time to help us with our project.
*image details- ‘Group work‘ by Eldan Goldenberg, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Learning By Doing 