YCCS Team Produces First Research Brief

The YCCS team is proud to present it’s first research brief. YCCS (Youth-focused Citizen and Community Science) has been a focus for the center for the past few years, and the research brief is the product of a multi-year study on YCCS.

This brief highlights one of the key practices that we found supports learning through citizen science– sharing findings with outside audiences. When youth share findings with outside audiences, they become more motivated and take ownership for those findings.

When they do this, it helps youth expand their ideas about possible future career paths and helps youth see themselves as experts. Sharing findings can also help develop environmental science agency, which is both an understanding of environmental science as well as an identification with those practices and their developing belief that the ecosystem is something they can act on.  

“I never would imagine that such a young generation could communicate with the older generation who have accomplished so much, and (…) be on a somewhat level playing field”, said a participant from one YCCS case study.

To learn more about how youth can share findings, what it does and how educators can support it, please go to our full research brief.