Abstract
In this chapter we explore the idea of citizen science in science education and its value in broadening student science participation, building greater science engagement, and expanding the usefulness of science in broader life events and actions. The focus of the chapter is to explore how citizen science provides a space and context for teachers and students to engage in science content and activities that bring greater personal and community meanings in learning and doing science. The chapter seeks to explore the following questions framed by critical pedagogy and critical theories: What is citizen science and how does it raise critical consciousness in students from underrepresented groups? How is citizen science a space for equitable science teaching and learning space for all students? In what ways does citizen help students make sense of science learning and provides a context to challenge the dominant view of learning and doing science? How does citizen science make doing science a democratic practice for sociopolitical consciousness? As we answer these questions, we draw from critical theories and pedagogies where sociocultural contexts take a central space in understanding affordances of citizen science as a sociopolitical consciousness raising framework for teaching and learning.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, J. D. (2012). Community science: Capitalizing on local ways of enacting science in science education. In B. Fraser, K. Tobin, & C. McRobbie (Eds.), Second international handbook of science education (pp. 1163–1177). Rotterdam: Springer.
Adams, J. D., Gupta, P., & DeFelice, A. (2012). Schools and informal science settings: Collaborate, co-exist, or assimilate? Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 409–416.
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1989). Science for all Americans. New York: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, D. P. (2004). Public computing: Reconnecting people to science. Retrieved December, 2018, from http://www.apisindustries.com/Seti/boinc2.pdf
Apple, M. W. (1993). The politics of official knowledge: Does a national curriculum make sense. Teachers College Record, 95, 222–241.
Apple, M. (1995). Education and power (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Apple MW (2006) Ideology and curriculum. Routledge, New York
Apple, M. (2009). Global crises, social justice and education. New York: Routledge.
Banks JA (2008) Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global age. Educational Researcher 37:129–139
Benhabib, S. (1996). Toward a deliberative model of democratic legitimacy. In S. Benhabib (Ed.), Democracy and difference: Contesting the boundaries of the political (pp. 67–94). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bonney, R. (1996). Citizen science: A lab tradition. Living Bird, 15, 7–15.
Bonney, R., Ballard, H., Jordan, R., McCallie, E., Phillips, T., Shirk, J., & Wilderman, C. (2009). Public participation in scientific research: Defining the field and assessing its potential for informal science education. Washington, DC: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE). Retrieved December, 2018, from http://www.informalscience.org/images/research/PublicParticipationinScientificResearch.pdf
Bonney R, Cooper CB, Dickinson J, Kelling S, Phillips T, Rosenberg KV, Shirk J (2009b) Citizen science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy. BioScience 59:977–984
Bonney, R., Shirk, J. L., Phillips, T. B., Wiggins, A., Ballard, H. L., Miller-Rushing, A. J., & Parrish, J. K. (2014). Next steps for citizen science. Science, 343, 1436–1437.
Bonney R, Phillips TB, Ballard HL, Enck JW (2015) Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science? Public Understanding of Science 25:2–16
Bonney, R., Phillips, T. B., Ballard, H. L., & Enck, J. W. (2016). Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science? Public Understanding of Science, 25, 2–16.
Brossard, D., Lewenstein, B., & Bonney, R. (2005). Scientific knowledge and attitude change: The impact of a citizen science project. International Journal of Science Education, 27, 1099–1121.
Brzeski, K., Gunther, M. S., & Black, J. M. (2013). Evaluating river otter demography using noninvasive genetic methods. The Wildlife Society, 77, 1523–1531.
Buchanan, J., & Tullock, G. (1965). The Calculus of consent: Logical foundations of constitutional democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Burgess, D., Froehlich, S., Theobald, E., … Parrish. (2017). The science of citizen science: Exploring barriers to use as a primary research tool. Biological Conservation, 208, 113–120.
Calabrese Barton, A. M. (2012). Citizen(s’) science a response to “the future of citizen science”. Democracy & Education, 20, Article 2.
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Thesaurus. (2018). Retrieved December, 2018, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/citizen-science
Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D. K., Kahn, S., & Williams, W. M. (2014). Women in academic science: A changing landscape. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 15, 75–141.
Cohen, J. (1997). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. In J. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 67–91). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Conard, C. C., & Hilchey, K. G. (2011). A review of citizen science and community-based environmental monitoring: Issues and opportunities. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 176, 273–291.
Cooper, S. (2011). A framework for scientific discovery through video games. Doctor of Philosophy, University of Washington.
Cunningham, F. (2002). Theories of democracy: A critical introduction. New York: Routledge.
Dahl, R. (1959). A preface to democratic theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dawson, E., & Jensen, E. (2011). Towards a contextual turn in visitor studies: Evaluating visitor segmentation and identity-related motivations. Visitor Studies, 14, 127–140.
Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Denver: Alan Swallow.
Eaton, D. P., Keuroghlian, A., Santos, M. d. C. A., Desbiez, A. L. J., & Sada, D. W. (2017). Citizen scientists help unravel the nature of cattle impacts on native mammals and birds visiting fruiting trees in Brazil’s southern Pantanal. Biological Conservation, 208, 29–39.
Eiben, C. B., Siegel, J. B., Bale, J. B., Cooper, S., Khatib, F., Shen, B. W., … & Baker, D. (2012). Increased diels-alderase activity through backbone remodelling guided by Foldit players. Nature Biotechnology, 30, 190–192.
Eiffert, S., Noibi, Y., Vesper, S., Downs, J., Fulk, F., Wallace, J., et al. (2016). A citizen-science study documents environmental exposures and asthma prevalence in two communities. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 1–8.
Eitzel, M.V., Cappadonna, J.L., Santos-Lang, C., Duerr, R.E., Virapongse, A., West, S.E., … & Jiang, Q. (2017). Citizen science terminology matters: Exploring key terms. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.96.
Fisher, J. B., Kelly, M., & Romm, J. (2006). Scales of environmental justice: Combining GIS and spatial analysis for air toxics in West Oakland, California. Health & Place, 12, 701–714.
Fleming, M., Kenyon, L. O., Kenyon, L., & Upadhyay, B. (2015). Democratic science: Engaging middle school students in meaningful practices through community engagement. Education in Democracy, 7, 37–63.
Freire P (1990) Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin, London
Friere, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Books.
Giroux, H. (1992). Border crossings. Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Greene, M. (1986). In search of a critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 27, 427–441.
Gruenewald, D. A., & Smith, G. A. (2008). Making room for the local. In D. A. Gruenewald & G. A. Smith (Eds.), Place-based education in the global age (pp. 137–153). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gurian, E. H. (2005). Threshold fear. In S. Macleod (Ed.), Reshaping museum space (pp. 203–213). Oxford: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1996). Three normative models of democracy. In S. Benhabib (Ed.), Democracy and difference: Contesting the boundaries of the political (pp. 21–30). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Haklay M (2013) Citizen science and volunteered geographic information: Overview and typology of participation. In: Sui D, Elwood S, Goodchild M (eds) Crowdsourcing geographic knowledge. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 105–122
Hochachka, W. M., Fink, D., Hutchinson, R. A., Sheldon, D., Wong, W. K., & Kelling, S. (2012). Data-intensive science applied to broad-scale citizen science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 27, 130–137.
Howe J (2006) The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired 14 Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Hursh, D. (2007). Assessing no child left behind and the rise of neoliberal education policies. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 493–518.
Irwin, A. (1995). Citizen science: A study of people, expertise, and sustainable development. London: Routledge.
Jordan, R. C., Gray, S. A., Howe, D. V., Brooks, W. R., & Ehrenfeld, J. G. (2011). Knowledge gain and behavioral change in citizen-science programs: Citizen-scientist knowledge gain. Conservation Biology, 256, 1148–1154.
Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. London: Simon & Schuster.
Kissling MT, Calabrese Barton A (2013) Interdisciplinary study of the local power plant: Cultivating ecological citizens. Social Studies Research and Practice 8, 128–142.
Ladson-Billings G (1994) The dreamkeepers. Jossey-Bass Publishing Co., San Francisco.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995a). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34, 159–165.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995b). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 465–491.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). Yes, but how do we do it? Practicing culturally relevant pedagogy. In J. Landsman & C. W. Lewis (Eds.), White teachers/diverse classrooms: A guide to building inclusive schools, promoting high expectations, and eliminating racism (pp. 29–42). Sterling: Stylus.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0:a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84, 74–84.
Lieberman, G. A., & Hoody, L. L. (1998). Closing the achievement gap: Using the environment as an integrating context for learning (Results of a Nationwide Study). Poway, CA: Science Wizards. Retrieved from http://www.seer.org/extras/execsum.pdf
Lim, M., Tan, E., & Calabrese Barton, A. (2013). Science learning as participation with and in a place. In J. Bianchini, V. Akerson, A. Calabrese Barton, O. Lee, and A. Rodriguez (Eds.) Moving the Equity Agenda Forward: Equity Research, Practice, and Policy in Science Education (pp. 191-209). Rotterdam: Springer.
Lippmann, W. (1993). The phantom public. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Lukacs, P. M., & Burnham, K. P. (2005). Review of capture-recapture methods applicable to noninvasive genetic sampling. Molecular Ecology, 14(13), 3909–3919.
Maruyama, G., Jones, R., Adams, M., & Upadhyay, B. (2014). Including communities in urban university-school partnerships. Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, 7, 364–379.
McLaren, P. (1995). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture, oppositional politics in a postmodern era. London: Routledge.
McLaren, P. (2005). Critical pedagogy and class struggle in the age of neoliberal globalization: Notes from history’s underside. International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 2, 1–24.
Mueller MP, Tippins DJ (2012) Citizen science, ecojustice, and science education: Rethinking an education from nowhere. In: Fraser B, Tobin K, McRobbie C (eds) Second international handbook of science education. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 865–882
Mueller, M. P., Tippins, D., & Lynn, B. (2012). The future of citizen science. Democracy and Education, 20, 2.
National Academy of Sciences (NAS). (2010). Rising above the gathering storm, revisited: Rapidly approaching category 5. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Audubon Society (2018). Retrieved December, 2018, from https://www.audubon.org/
National Biodiversity Network [NBN]. (2018). NBN atlas. Retrieved December, 2018, from https://nbnatlas.org/
Ottinger, G. (2010). Buckets of resistance: Standards and the effectiveness of citizen science. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35, 244–270.
Paetkau, D. (2005). The optimal number of markers in genetic capture – Mark – Recapture studies. Journal of Wildlife Management, 68, 449–452.
Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and democratic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pierotti, R. (2011). Indigenous knowledge, ecology, and evolutionary biology. New York: Routledge.
Plunk, A. D., Tate, W. F., Bierut, L. J., & Grucza, R. A. (2014). Intended and unintended effects of state-mandated high school science and mathematics course graduation requirements on educational attainment. Educational Researcher, 43, 230–241.
Pocock, M. J. O., Chapman, D. S., Sheppard, L. J., & Roy, H. E. (2014). A strategic framework to support the implementation of citizen science for environmental monitoring. Final report to Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. http://www.ceh.ac.uk/products/publications/understanding-citizen-science.html
Powers, A. L. (2004). An evaluation of four place-based education programs. The Journal of Environmental Education, 35, 17–32.
Pradel, R. (1996). Utilization of capture-mark-recapture for the study of recruitment and population growth rate. Biometrics, 52, 703–709.
Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Raddick, J., Bracey, G., Gay, P. L., Lintott, C. J., Murray, P., Schawinski, K., … & Vandenberg, J. (2010). Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the motivations of citizen science volunteers. Astronomy Education Review, 9, 1–18.
Raddick, M. J., Bracey, G., Gay, P. L., Lintott, C. J., Cardamone, C., Murray, P., … Vandenberg, J. (2013). Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of citizen scientists. Astronomy Education Review, 12, np. Retrieved from https://access.portico.org/stable?au=pgg3ztfcv7h
Reed, J., Raddick, J., Lardner, A., & Carney, K. (2013). An exploratory factor analysis ofmotivations for participating in Zooniverse, a collection of virtual citizen science projects. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual Hawaii international conference on systems sciences (pp. 7–11).
Riesch H, Potter C (2013) Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions. Public Understanding of Science 23:107–120
Riesch, H., & Potter, C. (2014). Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions. Public Understanding of Science, 23, 107–120.
Ruiz-Mallén, I., Riboli-Sasco, L., Ribrault, C., Heras, M., Laguna, D., & Perié, L. (2016). Citizen science: Toward transformative learning. Science Communication, 38, 523–534.
Ryan RM, Deci EL (2009) Promoting self-determined school engagement: Motivation, learning and well-being. In: Wentzel KR, Wigfield A (eds) Handbook of motivation at school. Routledge, New York, pp 171–195
Schumpeter, J. (1962 [1942]). Capitalism, socialism and democracy, New York: Harper and Row.
Seider, S., et al. (2017). Developing sociopolitical consciousness of race and social class inequality in adolescents attending progressive and no excuses urban secondary schools. Applied Developmental Science, 22, 169–118.
SETI@Home. (2006). SETI@home poll results. Retrieved December, 2018, from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/slides/xerox/polls.html
Shirk J, Bonney R (2015) Citizen science framework review: Informing a framework for citizen science within the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Ithaca, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Shirk, J., Ballard, H., Wilderman, C., Phillips, T., Wiggins, A., Jordan, R., et al. (2012). Public participation in scientific research: A framework for deliberate design. Ecology and Society, 17, 29–49.
Silvertown, J. (2009). A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(9), 467–471.
Simon, N. (2012). Come on in and make yourself uncomfortable. Museum 2.0 [Online]. Retrieved October, 2018, from http://museumtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/come-on-in-andmake-yourself.html
Sleeter, C. E. (2012). Confronting the marginalization of culturally responsive pedagogy. Urban Education, 47, 562–584.
Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi delta kappan, 83, 584–594.
Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place- and community-based education in schools. New York: Routledge.
Snik, F., Rietjens, J. H., Apituley, A., Volten, H., Mijling, B., Di Noia, A., et al. (2014). Mapping atmospheric aerosols with a citizen science network of smartphone spectropolarimeters. Geophysical Research Letters, 41, 7351–7358.
Sultana, P., & Abeyasekera, S. (2008). Effectiveness of participatory planning for community management of fisheries in Bangladesh. Journal of Environmental Management, 86, 201–213.
Switzer, C. (2014). Middle school: Using place-based inquiry to inspire and motivate future scientists. Science Scope, 37, 50–58.
Szostkowski, A. & Upadhyay, B. (2019). Looking forward by looking back: Equity in science education as a socially just and morally healing act. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 14, 335–353.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2014) Race for results: Building a path to opportunity for all children (KIDS COUNT Policy Report). Author, Baltimore Retrieved from www.aecf.org/race4results
Theobald, E. J., Ettinger, A. K., Burgess, H. K., DeBey, L. B., Schmidt, N. R., Froehlich, H. E., …, Parrish, J. K. (2015). Global change and local solutions: Tapping the unrealized potential of citizen science for biodiversity research. Biological Conservation, 181, 236–244.
Trautmann, N. M., Fee, J., Tomasek, T. M., & Bergey, N. R. (2013). Citizen science: 15 lessons that bring biology to life, 6–12. Washington, DC: NSTA Press.
Tulloch, A. I., Possingham, H. P., Joseph, L. N., Szabo, J., & Martin, T. G. (2013). Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biological Conservation, 165, 128–138.
Upadhyay, B., & Albrecht, N. (2011). Deliberative democracy in an urban elementary science classroom. In S. Basu, A. Calabrese Barton, & E. Tan (Eds.), Building the expertise to empower low-income minority youth in science (pp. 75–83). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Upadhyay, B., Maruyama, G., & Albrecht, N. (2017). Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science. International Journal of Science Education, 39, 2528–2547.
Upadhyay B, Chaudhary MT, Gautam D, Tharu B (2018) Maghi: A case study of indigenous Tharu cultural heritage for democratic practice and STEM education in Nepal. In: Liljeblad J, Verschuuren B (eds) Indigenous perspectives on sacred natural sites: Culture, governance and conservation. Routledge, London, pp 136–151
Upadhyay, B., Chaudhary, B. T., Gautam, D., & Tharu, B. (2019). Maghi: A case study of indigenous Tharu cultural heritage for democratic practice and STEM education in Nepal. In J. Liljeblad & B. Verschuuren (Eds.), Indigenous perspectives on sacred natural sites: Culture, governance and conservation (pp. 136–151). Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
Weinstein, M. (2012). Schools/citizen science a response to “the future of citizen science”. Democracy & Education, 20, 1–3.
Weinstein, M. (2016). Critiquing and transcending STEM. Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education, 7, 63–72.
Wiggins, A., & Crowston, K. (2011). From conservation to crowdsourcing: A typology of citizen science. In System sciences (HICSS), 2011 44th Hawaii international conference on (pp. 1–10). IEEE.
Wiggins A, Crowston K (2015) Surveying the citizen science landscape. First Monday 20(1) Retrieved from https://firstmonday.org/article/view/5520/4194
World Community Grid. (2013). Member study: Findings and next steps. Retrieved November, 2018, from http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/about_us/viewNewsArticle.do?articleId=323
Young, I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zooniverse. (2018). Galaxy Zoo. Retrieved December, 2018, from https://www.zooniverse.org
Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #1737633. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Oesterle, J., Upadhyay, B., Brown, J.C., Vernon, M. (2019). Citizen Science. In: Trifonas, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Research in Cultural Studies and Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01426-1_28-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01426-1_28-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01426-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01426-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education