For several decades, citizen science has advanced research agendas while propelling informal science education outside the classroom. Citizen science has also been a means of civic engagement and flexing the muscles of citizenship. In recent years there has been interest in bringing citizen science into the classroom.

In hindsight, headway in education seems to have been moving towards citizen science for a long time.

In the 1850s, Edward Youmans (later founder of Popular Science magazine) began to urge for a change in educational practices in the United State. Along with his British counterpart, Thomas Huxley, he helped urge a movement for replacing emphasis on rote memorization and studies of classics and languages with education that taught students to understand the natural world. This shift included the goal educating all rather than only the elite. They argued that a focus on science, its core practice of observing the natural world, and the use of inductive reasoning powers, would develop students’ intellect. In his book on the history of science education, George DeBoer¹ said those championing science education believed that the ability to reason scientifically would “free individuals from the dominance of authoritarian teaching and empower them to derive truth independently.”

In the early 1900s, John Dewey created the lab school to experiment with educational practices, such as students being in charge of their own learning. Effective education had a real-world focus, with science related to everyday experiences and the honing of problem-solving skills.

The Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 sparked another change in science education towards providing hands-on experiences and emphasis on critical thinking skills. Soon the National Science Teachers Association, in addition to providing training for science teachers, recognized the importance of developing science literacy for everyone, not just those going into science careers. More emphasis was placed on science that held social relevance and finding ways that science intersects with other subjects.

Underlying the generations of education reforms, the progression has been in the direction of creating thinkers instead of memorizers, where the skills of science are relevant to everyday life. The next big advance is to provide experiences so thinkers can become discoverers.

Towards this goal, teachers in the Broward County school district in Florida have been reviewing and rating citizen science projects in SciStarter to make it easier for STEM teachers to search and find projects that will easily fit into their lesson planning and align with Science and Engineering Practices. Note, soon at SciStarter.com, you’ll be able to add your reviewers and recommendations for any of the hundreds of citizen science projects in SciStarter.

The Students Discover program, a collaboration between North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, hosts teachers in the summer as Kenan Fellows. These Kenan Fellows help in research labs, select citizen science projects of interest, and develop citizen science lesson plans and curriculum modules.

The BirdSleuth program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has developed a curriculum framework to help teachers adapt any citizen science project into lesson plans that meet Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. The free curriculum, called Investigating Evidence, includes lesson plans and online resources to help teachers guide students in the scientific process, from asking scientific questions, developing and testing hypotheses, collecting and making sense of data, drawing conclusions, and sharing their findings.

Citizen science as a type of experiential learning in the classroom gives students entry into authentic scientific inquiry. What can students learn by taking part in citizen science? How should it be implemented? What resources are available to guide the way? Can citizen science be useful in non-science subjects? Can it be useful in training teachers? Is it a threat to the scientific rigor or budding reputation of citizen science? We’ll explore these questions and more on the next Twitter discussion about citizen science, hosted by me (@CoopSciScoop) and sponsored by SciStarter (@SciStarter) at the hashtag #CitSciChat.

Our guest panelists are teachers and other educators from the initiatives mentioned above. To accommodate some teachers, we are pushing the chat to start at 3:30pm ET, Wednesday 9 September. Those not on Twitter can follow along here.

Guest panelists:

Michelle Neil (@Michelle_Neil), a volunteer scientist in CSIRO’s Scientists and Mathematicians In Schools (SMIS) Program

Jennifer Fee (@BirdSleuth), Project Leader for BirdSleuth

Lea Shell (@YourWild_Life), Curator of Digital Media with Your Wild Life and Students Discover

Lisa Milenkovic (@sleuthacademy) from the Broward County School District

Dayson Pasion (@MrDpasion), teacher and Kenan Fellow in Students Discover

 

¹DeBoer, G. E. 1991. A History of Ideas in Science Education: Implications for Practice. Teachers College Press, New York.

 

Featured image: Youth birder at Wild School event (photo by Cindy Phillips, USFWS)