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Youth-focused community and citizen science (CCS) is increasingly used to promote science learning and to increase the accessibility of the tools of scientific research among historically marginalized and underserved communities. CCS projects are frequently categorized according to their level of public participation and their distribution of power between professional scientists and participants from collaborative and co-created projects to projects where participants have limited roles within the science process. In this study, we examined how two different CCS models, a contributory design and a co-created design, influenced science self-efficacy and science interest among youth CCS participants. We administered surveys and conducted post-program interviews with youth participation in two different CCS projects in Alaska, the Winterberry Project and Fresh Eyes on Ice, each with a contributory and a co-created model. We found that youth participating in co-created CCS projects reflected more often on their science self-efficacy than did youth in contributory projects. The CCS program model did not influence youths’ science interest, which grew after participating in both contributory and co-created projects. Our findings suggest that when youth have more power and agency to make decisions in the science process, as in co-created projects, they have greater confidence in their abilities to conduct science. Further, participating in CCS projects excites and engages youth in science learning, regardless of the CCS program design.
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Probing beyond the biology: Centering a relational ontology in middle-school science modeling towards Rightful Presence
Modeling science phenomena serves as a tool to support science practices, where classroom environments and youths’ relations with each other and those in positions of power shape how the activity unfolds and what models are created. Grounded in a relational ontology, we build on justice-oriented approaches to studying youths’ learning towards their Rightful Presence by examining the expansive and political ways of knowing youth draw on while modeling. We followed a group of four middle-school youth and traced the human-human and human-more-than-human powered relations that shaped their models of short and long-term stress created across two multi-day lessons. We illustrate how models emerged as more-than-human entities with identities shaped through youths’ intra-group, student-teacher, and human-more-than-human relations, entangled with who and how youth are in and with this world. We also argue ceding power to youth to re-author their and their models’ rights supported more expansive understandings of youths’ learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2000515
- PAR ID:
- 10424916
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2023
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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