Developing a Research-Based Environmental Citizen Science* Curriculum to Support Science Identity Development for High School Students
Many of us working in science education hope that at least some of our students will someday pursue a career in a STEM field. But in order to become a scientist, a student needs to identify with science; they need to think of themselves as a science person. At the STEM Center for Research, Education, & Outreach at Southern Illinois University we pursue NSF-funded research that explores the question: What makes a student feel like a scientist, or a science person?
We intentionally designed a curriculum to try to encourage the development of a stronger science identity in our students. Along the way we collected feedback from many educators and participants to improve the lesson plans, as well as collected research data through surveys and interviews to help us answer questions about how individual students’ levels of performance, competence, and recognition influenced their sense of their own science identity. Over the course of 4 years, we used all this input to hone a final version of the curriculum that is now freely available for others to use.
This high-school level curriculum uses hands-on environmental citizen science research experiences to get students engaged in authentic science that is relevant to the place where they live. With over 40 lesson plans divided into 9 units ranging from Air Pollution to Science Communication this program can be implemented in its entirety, or by section, in a traditional classroom or an informal learning setting.
*Note: Although citizen science was the most widely accepted term for many years, including during the time the grant proposal for this project was written, recently the field has moved towards more inclusive updated language. The former Citizen Science Association voted in May of 2023 to change its name to the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences, and our organization has also adopted the term participatory science going forward. However, curriculum materials produced during earlier years of our programs still use the older term citizen science.
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