The Learning and Environmental science Agency Research Network
for Citizen Science (LEARN CitSci) Project is a four-year
international collaborative research project that aims to
understand how young people develop Environmental Science Agency
through their participation in Citizen Science programs at
Natural History Museums. Principal Investigators from the USA and
UK include Citizen Science practitioners at The Natural History
Museum Los Angeles County in Los Angeles, The Natural History
Museum in London, and the California Academy of Sciences in San
Francisco, and Educational Researchers from UC Davis, Open
University, and the University of Oxford. Read More
eeWorks
How can citizen science facilitate environmental education, and
what does current research tell us about this relationship? Our
Center hopes to answer these questions through participation in
eeWorks, a broader initiative led by the North American Association for Environmental
Education (NAAEE). Research groups such as ours are
conducting comprehensive literature reviews on various
environmental education topics. At CCS, we are investigating and
synthesizing the research evidence available documenting citizen
science as a pathway for environmental education. Additionally,
we hope to identify future research directions to best support
citizen science as a strategy for environmental
education. Read More
Citizen Science on the Farm
Citizen Science on the Farm is a one-year professional
development course to train elementary school teachers to use
agriculture-based community and citizen science in their school
gardens or campus green spaces. Together, the Center for
Community and Citizen Science and the UC Davis Student Farm
are providing teachers the support they need to leverage outdoor
spaces on their campuses for engaging students in learning about
sustainable agriculture and the environment. The project will
provide teacher training, a complementary curriculum, and
supporting resources to foster agricultural literacy, engagement,
and action in students’ lives and communities. Read more
Our Forests
The Youth Community Action and
Science in Our Forests (“Our Forests”) project will train and
support elementary school teachers as they work with their
students, local environmental scientists and community
organizations to study local forests and fire risk in Nevada
County, California. We aim to create a replicable model of
science standards-aligned, school-based community and citizen
science that can be used in classrooms beyond Nevada County after
the project ends. Our Forests is a partnership of the Center for
Community and Citizen Science, the Nevada County Superintendent of
Schools and the Sierra Streams
Institute, supported by a $2.3 million grant from the
National Science Foundation.
Read more
Resources for Youth-Focused Community and Citizen Science
Since 2013, we have been studying YCCS in a variety of
contexts, and convening project designers, teachers, scientists
and others involved in this work to generate and share knowledge
of when and how YCCS works best for learning, identity, and
agency. The YCCS website
contains research briefs, case studies, and descriptions of key
practices for youth and educators, and example of what those look
like in different contexts. These resources serve as the
foundation for our work with educators, and ongoing research on
science learning. Read More
Past Projects
Examining Engagement and Science Identity through Participation
How can we broaden participation in science across diverse
communities? Our researchers are collaborating with Cornell Lab
of Ornithology to investigate how and why people from different
backgrounds engage with different forms of citizen science, and
what they get out of that experience. Funded by the National
Science Foundation, this research will help thousands of ISE
practitioners and program developers to design projects that
achieve the greatest impacts for both new and existing audiences.
The Science Outreach Coordinator will play a key role in a new
collaborative educational and research project between Nevada County Superintendent of
Schools (NCSOS) office, Sierra Streams Institute and the
Center for
Community and Citizen Science at the UC Davis School of
Education. This project is being funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF) for the years 2019-2022.
Building Career Pathways and
Networks for Underrepresented STEM Students
Tuesday, June 11th
From 1:00pm-3:00pm PST
At this Collabinar, we will be hearing from Melissa B.
Wilson, who will share her experiences working in St. John, U.S.
Virgin Islands. Our discussion will focus on ways to engage
underrepresented students in STEM careers.
We have enjoyed continuing our Collabinar series this
spring! On Friday, May 17th we had the fascinating
opportunity to learn more about—
Sci Starter Education: a new, pilot, Ed-Tech
platform to integrate facilitator-led citizen science in schools
through district- and school-wide approaches
Many may have heard of SciStarter, which helps people
find, join, and contribute to citizen science through its
database of thousands of citizen science projects taking place
all over the world. In this event, we learned about a new
SciStarter initiative that points to possibilities for scaled up
integration of citizen science in the classroom.
The Center collaborated with the California Naturalist Program,
educators in the Woodland Joint Unified School District, and a
variety of local nature centers and reserves to encourage
participation in the Sacramento City Nature Challenge.
Despite being its first year participating in this global
competition (as one of more than 160 cities worldwide), over 500
people in the Sacramento region logged 9,798 observations of over
1,200 unique species using iNaturalist.
We are still glowing from our three days of shared learning,
planning, and camaraderie with local partners, teachers,
after-school educators, school garden coordinators. With thanks
to our partner, Yolo Farm to Fork, who developed the article
below, we offer some initial insights from this workshop, with
more to come in the near future!
Named after a mythical land from a novela when the Spanish first
arrived, California was said to be paradise on Earth. However,
times have changed since the Spanish first laid their eyes on the
place we now call home. Social activists have spoken openly about
the disasters of environmental change and many, from the top of
California’s government to grassroots organizations are beginning
to create much more systematic and widespread awareness and
change with initiatives.
A new paper by
recently graduated Emily Harris and the Center’s Faculty
Director, Heidi Ballard, provides a framework for educators to
design and implement citizen science projects in the classroom to
facilitate meaningful student learning. This publication adds an
important component to our suite of materials aimed at
helping educators use Youth-focused Community and Citizen Science
in their work.
This blog post, authored by Ryan Meyer, Heidi Ballard, and
Lila Higgins, originally
appeared on the Blue Sky Funders Forum blog.
When do experiences with science lead young people to create
change in their lives, landscapes, and communities? Consider this
reflection from Rachel Anne Arias, a 12-year-old living in La
Crescenta in Southern California:
We asked our partners – expert researchers and
practitioners — what it looks like when youth participate in
community and citizen science. The resulting video speaks to the
tremendous potential of youth-focused community and citizen
science (YCCS) in the classroom, in the field, in a science
museum, or anywhere in between.
