Lessons Learned from Citizen Science in the Classroom

Overview & Synopsis

Mueller, Tippins, and Bryan's contrast of the current limitations of science education with the potential virtues of citizen science provides an important theoretical perspective about the future of democratized science and K-12 education. However, the authors fail to adequately address the existing barriers and constraints to moving community-based science into the classroom. We contend that for these science partnerships to be successful, teachers, researchers, and other program designers must reexamine questions about traditional science education and citizen-science programs and attend to certain dimensions, including: framing these projects around the nature of science, creating a dialog with experts and allowing access to the primary literature, and fostering the ability of the public to critique information and evidence. We argue that the resource constraints of scientists, teachers, and students likely pose problems to moving true democratized science into the classroom. (Contains 1 figure.)