In school-based learning initiatives that involve out of school experts, successful implementation requires shared goals, a common language, and agreed-upon ways of working between the teachers, students and the experts. In fact, the involvement of the experts in the learning process plays an important role in achieving this goal. Experts bring disciplinary, professional, or practice-based knowledge, and ensure that students’ work is aligned with relevant standards, methods, and ways of thinking in the field, thereby guiding students’ work so that it makes a meaningful contribution beyond the classroom. In addition, such involvement exposes students to topics, practices, methods, tools, and knowledge resources that are often not accessible in schools. Engagement with experts can increase students’ motivation to participate in the project and may also increase their motivation to engage with the relevant field of knowledge more broadly.
Within such triadic relationships, teachers bring the pedagogical knowledge and function as mediators between students and experts. They know what is best for their students and can make adaptations and changes to experts’ requirements, ensuring that the activity serves both students’ needs and the shared goals of the project.
Research indicates that developing discourse among students, teachers, and experts is of great importance and may contribute to understanding how knowledge is created, used, and applied in solving real-world problems. This can be achieved in different ways: student visits to relevant institutions or sites of practice, experts’ visits to schools, joint field excursions, communication between students and experts via video calls, or asynchronous communication. For example, discourse between students and experts regarding data, products, problems, or cases examined in a learning project can integrate advanced thinking into the learning process, including how evidence is collected, worked with, interpreted, and used. Discourse between students and experts also has the potential to expand students’ contribution to the project and to contribute to the development of the experts themselves. Although experts are often positioned as such and students as “apprentices,” many learning initiatives are based, among other things, on the assumption that distributed knowledge in the broader community is not fully within experts’ reach. Involving teachers and students in planning, interpretation, or discussions about results and their implications can lead, for example, to stronger connections between the project and the local environment in which it takes place, or to new directions for inquiry, design, or action.
Studies on this type of school-based initiatives have found that bridging among teachers, students, and experts is best accomplished through establishing a partnership between schools and experts. Such a partnership is built on agreement regarding goals and processes that benefit all sides. Teachers, students, and experts are required to demonstrate understanding of the needs and constraints of different stakeholders, for example, maintaining procedures or products that meet professional or disciplinary needs, attending to the constraints of the school year (holidays, vacations, etc.), and the schools’ desire to sustain contact with experts. It was found that the ongoing relationship required to sustain such a partnership can have significant effects on the partners. For teachers, it provides an opportunity for professional development while introducing diversity and interest into routine pedagogical work. Experts, on the other hand, may benefit from strengthening the connection between their professional or disciplinary activity and community engagement, as well as from deeper familiarity with the public and the issues that concern it
For example, in a school newspaper project, students’ articles could be developed through discourse among students, teachers, and local journalists. Students might write articles for the school newspaper on topics that interest them and are relevant to their school or local community. Local journalists could provide feedback on the articles, helping students refine their writing, strengthen their use of evidence, and consider journalistic standards such as clarity, accuracy, and relevance. As part of such a partnership, the journalists might select one article from the school newspaper for publication on a local news website. This would enable students to experience how their work can contribute to public discourse beyond the classroom, while also creating a meaningful connection between school-based learning, professional practice, and the local community.
In the project “Sleep – A Third of Life” the sleep diary used to collect data about adolescents’ sleep habits was developed through discourse among students, teachers, and scientists. This was done in order to enable students to investigate questions that intrigued them, even if these questions had not previously appeared in the sleep diaries, while also examining sensitivities that might arise in certain classes regarding specific variables.
Deepening and Expansion ▼
The contribution of interaction with scientists to understanding the nature of science
Tsybulsky and colleagues (2018) examined a curriculum program (not focused on citizen science) that included students’ visits to university research laboratories. The study investigated the program’s impact on students’ perceptions of science, particularly their understanding of the nature of science. Understanding the nature of science includes an accurate view of the principles through which knowledge is produced through scientific inquiry, for example, understanding that science involves the ongoing construction of knowledge and that existing scientific knowledge is therefore subject to change, or that collaboration among scientists is crucial to the quality of scientific knowledge produced. A central component of the program was student tours at universities led by graduate students who described their research, answered students’ questions, and engaged in discussion with them. Findings showed that the program had a positive impact on how students understood principles related to the nature of science, and that this impact persisted over time (six months after the program ended).
Insights from collaborations among teachers, students, and scientists in a citizen science project
Gray and colleagues (2012) describe the story of Nicosia, a high school biology teacher in the United States. Nicosia led her ninth-grade students in a citizen science project that included a partnership with a local environmental organization and with scientists. Students took an active role in defining the research topic and in constructing a survey examining residents’ willingness to pay for environmental restoration activities. At the end of their work, they wrote (under their teacher’s guidance) an article that was submitted for peer review to a scientific journal (with reviewers unaware it had been written by students). The article (Nicosia et al., 2014) was accepted after the scientists involved in the project made only stylistic changes. In the introduction to the published article, the students wrote about the difficulties they encountered and what they learned, noting that despite the challenges, the experience was rewarding. They reported learning how science can be used to solve real-world problems. The educational researchers who accompanied the project published a separate article in collaboration with teacher Nicosia (Gray et al., 2012), addressing challenges faced by school-based citizen science projects that aim to promote close collaboration between students and scientists. The article argues that involving students in research requires teachers and scientists to mediate the uncertainty inherent in scientific research and the fact that it is a non-linear process of trial and error. In addition, scientists need willingness to relinquish some control over the research process and allow students to make mistakes. Accordingly, teachers and the learning framework need the patience required for such work. The researchers noted that teachers and scientists in the project jointly created learning materials that bridged principles of scientific research and regular classroom learning. The authors continue by detailing additional challenges and recommendations.
The impact of teachers’ involvement in citizen science partnerships on their professional and personal development
Benichou and colleagues (2022) examined how teachers’ ongoing involvement in school-based citizen science partnerships influences their professional and personal development. The lead researcher provided sustained support for establishing and implementing partnerships between teachers and scientists in two different citizen science projects across three schools. Data collected during the process, including documentation of materials produced during implementation, documentation of ongoing communication among partners, and interviews with participants, suggest that involvement in the partnership fostered teachers’ sense of meaning and meaningful practice. Teachers also demonstrated increased initiative in leading citizen science projects in their schools and in participating in TCSS Center activities as active community members.
Additional Resources:
Video – Partnerships among students, teachers, and scientists around citizen science. Lecture video by Prof. Yael Kali, Al4biodiversity Conference, University of Haifa, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm18WhnNWmY
References ▼
Attias, A. Citizen science in school: Reciprocal partnership between schools and scientists. Research abstract. Retrieved from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, March 2022: https://did.li/vt8Hw
Benichou, M., Kali, Y., & Hod, Y. (2022). Teachers’ expansive framing in school-based citizen science partnerships. In A. Castro Superfine, S. R. Goldman, M.-L. Ko (Eds.), Teacher learning in changing contexts: Perspectives from the learning sciences. Elsevier.
Gray, S. A., Nicosia, K., & Jordan, R. C. (2012). Lessons learned from citizen science in the classroom. Democracy & Education, 20(1), 1–5.
Kali, Y. (2006). Collaborative knowledge-building using the Design Principles Database. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1(2), 187–201.
Nicosia, K., Daaram, S., Edelman, B., Gedrich, L., He, E., McNeilly, S., Shenoy, V., Velagapudi, A., Wu, W., Zhang, L., Barvalia, A., Bokka, V., Chan, B., Chiu, J.,
Dhulipalla, S., Hernandez, V., Jeon, J., Kanukollu, P., Kravets, P., … Gray, S. (2014). Determining the willingness to pay for ecosystem service restoration in a degraded coastal watershed: A ninth grade investigation. Ecological Economics, 104, 145–151.
Tsybulsky, D., Dodick, J., & Camhi, J. (2018). The effect of field trips to university research labs on Israeli high school students’ NOS understanding. Research in Science Education, 48(6), 1247–1272.
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