Chapter 11. Can Participation in a Citizen Science Project Empower Schoolchildren to Believe in Their Ability to Act on Environmental Problems?

Kruse, Katrin; Kiessling, Tim; Knickmeier, Katrin; Thiel, Martín; Parchmann, Ilka

doi:10.1039/9781788016087-00225

Cited by 9 publications

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“…The predecessor of the Plastic Pirates program, the project Following the Pathways of Plastic Litter, engaged classes in community building exercises through an online blog and through sharing experiences via video and texts. Still, there was a moderation and language barrier between the two participating countries (Chile and Germany), which was challenging to overcome and time-consuming for the coordination team (Kruse et al, 2020). Similarly, short funding periods (Figure 3) and uncertainties about future funding made the communication with participants even more difficult, as we (the coordination team) could only offer ambiguous responses to the questions of teachers whether future participation was possible, had no certainty in planning these future campaigns, and submitted data were not fully analysed yet.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing communication insights of the citizen science program Plastic Pirates—best practices from 7 years of engaging schoolchildren and teachers in plastic pollution research

Dittmann,

Kiessling,

Mederake

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Engaging the general public in research processes through citizen science allows for innovative scientific studies and makes science accessible to the general public. Effective communication strategies are crucial for the success of such initiatives. The citizen science program Plastic Pirates investigated the plastic pollution of rivers and implemented a variety of communication strategies with participating schoolchildren, teachers, and youth groups (e.g., sport associations, scouts or educational vacation programs, representing approximately 6% of participating groups). These were continuously revised and adapted since its start in 2016. Without time-efficient communication and strategies to keep track of conversations, it would not have been possible to achieve the scientific and educational goals of the program, i.e., to help teachers increase the environmental awareness and scientific literacy of their schoolchildren, and to produce peer-reviewed articles based on the collected citizen science data. Communication within the Plastic Pirates program was divided into four distinct phases: 1) recruiting and motivating participants, 2) coordination and guidance of participants, 3) data reception and revision, and 4) sharing updates and results. Some of the obstacles that had to be overcome to achieve successful communication were e.g., time constraints to obtaining scientific data from the participants, the time lag between the active involvement of the participants and the actual data analysis and publication of results, and limited personnel resources available for communication efforts. Our recommendations for other citizen science practitioners include regular and transparent communication with the participants regarding their contribution, the use of adequate and various communication channels, shifting the workload from the participants to the coordinating team of a citizen science initiative, as well as offering feedback on the research findings to the citizen scientists, thereby disseminating the results of the program.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing communication insights of the citizen science program Plastic Pirates—best practices from 7 years of engaging schoolchildren and teachers in plastic pollution research

Dittmann,

Kiessling,

Mederake

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…In addition, CS projects can improve the flow of information among scientists, the public, and decision-makers (McKinley et al, 2017). At the same time, they can have impacts on the individuals involved: increasing their understanding of scientific processes and the environment, making them feel recognised and appreciated for their contribution, and potentially making participants more sensitive to and aware of certain socio-environmental issues, developing a sense of agency that may encourage further action (Brossard et al, 2005;Cunha et al, 2017;Dickinson et al, 2012;Eastman et al, 2014;Freitag and Pfeffer, 2013;Kruse et al, 2020a;Oturai et al, 2022;Theobald et al, 2015;Turrini et al, 2018). These multiple benefits make CS suitable for different scientific disciplines and societal issues, and its use has consequently been seen to increase in popularity (Freitag and Pfeffer, 2013).…”

Section: Citizen Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen science in marine litter research: A review

Kawabe

Ghilardi-Lopes

Turra

et al. 2022

Marine Pollution Bulletin

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“…Coulson and Woods also emphasize the importance of co-created booklets to assist participants in monitoring environmental pollution in their surroundings [17]. For the Plastic Pirates a full co-creation approach involving school-children was not used because of time constraints and experiences of successful river and beach litter studies of the citizen science programs Científicos de la Basura (Litter Scientists, http://www.cientificosdelabasura.cl/en/) and Following the Pathways of Platic Litter [16,[18][19].…”

Section: Dittmann Et Almentioning

confidence: 99%

How to get citizen science data accepted by the scientific community? Insights from the Plastic Pirates project

Dittmann¹,

Kiessling²,

Kruse³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of Engaging Citizen Science Conference 2022 — PoS(CitSci2022)

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How to get citizen science data accepted by the scientific community? Insights from the Plastic Pirates projectData resulting from citizen science investigations are often questioned as most participants do not (yet) have a thorough scientific education. This is especially true for projects taking place in schools, and conducting citizen science in this context is further complicated by different motivations of participants and a busy school curriculum. Herein we present strategies to ensure quality of data generated by the citizen science project Plastic Pirates in which schoolchildren investigated litter pollution at and in rivers. We show how formulating concise research questions, offering accompanying educational material, employing data quality mechanisms in the field (photographs, standardized sampling methods and selfevaluation) as well as transparently detailing which datasets were excluded from analysis was vital to accomplish the acceptance of resulting citizen science data by the scientific community.

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Chapter 11. Can Participation in a Citizen Science Project Empower Schoolchildren to Believe in Their Ability to Act on Environmental Problems?

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Sharing communication insights of the citizen science program Plastic Pirates—best practices from 7 years of engaging schoolchildren and teachers in plastic pollution research

Sharing communication insights of the citizen science program Plastic Pirates—best practices from 7 years of engaging schoolchildren and teachers in plastic pollution research

Citizen science in marine litter research: A review

How to get citizen science data accepted by the scientific community? Insights from the Plastic Pirates project

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