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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1470070

Citizen Science in Elementary Classrooms: A Tale of Two Teachers

Provisionally accepted
Sarah J. Carrier Sarah J. Carrier 1*Danielle Scharen Danielle Scharen 2Meredith Hayes Meredith Hayes 2P S. Smith P S. Smith 2Anna Bruce Anna Bruce 2Laura Craven Laura Craven 2
  • 1 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States
  • 2 Horizon Research (United States), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Elementary teachers face many challenges when including reform-based science instruction in their classrooms, and some teachers have chosen to enhance their science instruction by introducing students to citizen science (CS) projects. When CS projects are incorporated in formal school settings, students have an opportunity to engage in real-world projects as they collect and make sense of data, yet relatively few CS projects offer substantial guidance for teachers seeking to implement the projects, placing a heavy burden on teacher learning.Methods: Framed in theory on teacher relationships with curricula, we prepared science standardsaligned educative support materials for two CS projects. We present convergent mixed methods research that examines two teachers' contrasting approaches to including school-based citizen science (SBCS) in their fifth-grade classrooms, each using support materials for one of the two CS projects. Both are veteran teachers at under-resourced Title 1 (an indicator of the high percentage of the students identified as economically disadvantaged) rural schools in the southeastern United States. We document the teachers' interpretations and use of SBCS materials for the CS projects with data from classroom observations, instructional logs, teacher interviews, and student focus groups.Results: One teacher adapted the materials to include scaffolding to position students for success in data collection and analysis. In contrast, the second teacher adapted the SBCS support materials to maintain a teacher-centered approach to instruction, identifying perceptions of students' limited abilities and limited instructional time as constraining factors. Discussion: We discuss the intersection of CS projects in formal education and opportunities for engaging students in authentic science data collection, analysis, and sense-making. The two teachers' stories identify the influences of school context and the need for teacher support to encourage elementary teachers' use of SBCS instruction to supplement their science instruction

    Keywords: citizen science, outdoor education, Elementary science, educative support materials, school-based citizen science

    Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 16 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Carrier, Scharen, Hayes, Smith, Bruce and Craven. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sarah J. Carrier, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.