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Eva Stratilová Urválková1/ Svatava Janoušková2
Citizen science –bridging the gap between
scientists and amateurs
Abstract:
The European Union has been facing common issues such as early school leaving and lifelong learning for
years. They are main targets that remain on the EU agenda and all good practice examples are welcome. Citizen
science is one of the approaches that seems to have great potential to draw a wide group of people to science
in a popular way. People can easily become a part of a scientic team and contribute to research that could
hardly be carried out by one small team. Many citizen science researchers deal with issues that are attractive for
people because of their usefulness or application (gathering ticks, taking photographs of surroundings) and/or
because of the accessibility of the data (typical for biological issues). This aspect also supports bridging the
gap between citizens-amateurs and scientists-professionals, as well as lifelong learning. Chemistry is a natural
science subject that is rarely performed in citizen science, and little research is devoted to the educational aspect
of citizen science projects. Therefore, we present here a brief overview of an increasing scientic design that is
widely used in natural science, although rarely in chemistry. Citizen science seems to be a potentially useful
tool for improving chemistry education.
Keywords: citizen science, informal science education, scientic literacy
DOI: 10.1515/cti-2018-0032
Introduction
The phenomenon of citizen science is a civic engagement that expects the public to take an active role in science:
amateur scientists (non-professionals) conduct scientic research often arranged by professionals, scientists.
The roots of science features can be found far back in history as observation and examination are typical for
humans. Enhancing human life has been based on scientic features, such as inquiry, analysis, and synthesis,
from prehistoric times. Clearer scientic contours were established in ancient times, but the greatest progress
of empirical sciences took place in the 19th century. Until the 20th century when the profession of “a scientist”
was established, “gentleman amateurs”were those who performed science, even in the universities of Europe
and North America (Connor, 2005). These gentlemen and ladies were comfortably well-o which enabled them
to spend their time collecting data and analysing them. Well-known is the story of Charles Darwin, who set
o in 1831 on his Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin, 22 years old, was recommended as a companion for the 26-
year-old captain, the British naval oicer and scientist Robert Fitzroy, who feared the loneliness of command
(Desmond, 2018). As a self-nanced gentleman naturalist, Darwin could leave the ship for extended periods,
pursuing his own interests. And that is what Darwin, in the end, was doing: observing, collecting data, taking
notes, making sketches, all within the framework of his natural science education and experience from univer-
sities. The voyage, unexpectedly, took almost ve years and Darwin collected thousands of items of data that
later served as a basis for his works, especially the most well-known, On the Origin of Species (1859) (Desmond,
2018). Nevertheless, the rst professional scientist is likely to be found even in the 17th century, Robert Hooke,
who was paid for an extensive survey of London after the Great Fire of 1666 using scientic methods. How-
ever, until the 20th century, science was performed by noblemen and women interested in science who had to
have their own resources and also specic prerequisites for scientic work (Silvertown, 2009). Even after the
professionalization of scientists, volunteers have still worked in areas such as archaeology (enthusiasts join the
excavations), natural science and ecology, where they help national repositories with collected samples (Hak-
lay, 2013). Moreover, with the new millennium and the easy availability of modern technologies and online
connections, the ability to engage in professional scientic research is much easier and more diverse. This co-
operation between professional scientists and volunteers can result in several forms and has been called citizen
science.
Eva StratilováUrválková
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This contribution is meant to be a brief review of an increasing scientic design that is mostly used in biology
topics but has potential also in education and educational research. We used the term “amateur”in the title
and at the beginning of the article to emphasize the dierence, the antonym feature of both words, but with
no pejorative connotations (see Edwards, 2014). In the next part, we will use “volunteers”or “participants”as
names for citizen scientists.
Definition and typology
Although citizen science, as we understand it today, has been performed for decades, the term was rst used
in the 1990s. Alan Irwin (1995) and Rick Bonney (Bonney, 1996 as cited in Bonney et al., 2009a) are those who
presented it independently, followed by more or less similar denitions which share the same core: it is a col-
laboration between the public, volunteers, and professional scientists in particular research. Riesch and Potter
(2014) distinguish in these denitions a focus on public-participation engagement and a project that commu-
nicates science presented by Rick Bonney, while Irwin’s approach develops concepts of scientic citizenship
by highlighting the necessity of opening up science policy processes to the public. However, the next deni-
tions dier mostly in the description of what kind of collaboration it is and what its result is (e.g. Bonney et al.,
2009b, Dening Citizen Science, 20151). In extreme examples, it can also be understood as public participa-
tion in organized research work, where no explicit participation of professional scientists is needed (Bonney
& Dickinson, 2012). The European Commission fosters the interaction between citizens, citizen science stake-
holders and European Union policy oicers, which led to publishing the White Paper on Citizen Science for
Europe (based on the previous Green Paper of 2013) that can be used by policy makers when setting up future
strategies for citizen engagement in science (Sanz, Holocher-Ertl, Kieslinger, García, & Silva, 2014). Accord-
ing to this document “Citizen Science refers to the general public engagement in scientic research activities
when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual eort or surrounding knowledge or
with their tools and resources.”In 2015, the European Citizen Science Association published its “10 Principles
of Citizen Science”, where the principles believed to support good practice in citizen science are summarized
(European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), 2015). These principles are: the active involvement of citizens
(1) in projects that have a genuine science outcome (2), where both participant groups benet from taking part
(3). Volunteers, citizen scientists, may participate in multiple stages during the scientic process (4) and they
receive feedback (5). Scientists should consider that citizen science has its limitations and biases, like any other
research approach (6). The project data are publicly available (7), citizen scientists are acknowledged in publi-
cations (8), the programmes have their own evaluations, e.g. on scientic output, data quality or participants
experience (9). Finally, the project leaders take legal and ethical issues into consideration (10).
Citizen science projects are designed in many forms, therefore there is an eort to categorize them. Most
authors divide the types of citizen science projects according to the degree of volunteer involvement in the
project (e.g. Bonney et al., 2009a; Haklay, 2013; Shirk et al., 2012; Wilderman, 2007), but Wiggins and Crowstone
(2011) created a categorization according to the type of activity, and Scassa and Chung (2015) according to the
type of intellectual property. From the above-mentioned, we will select a classication based on the type of
volunteer involvement: Rick Bonney et al. (2009a) and Jennifer Shirk et al. (2012) are members of the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA) who presented a classication of public participation
in scientic research (PPSR) in 2009 (Bonney et al., 2009a). The categories of PPSR where citizen science belongs
were extended with the contractual and collegial categories in 2012:
–Contractual projects (2012): scientists perform specic scientic research according to public (usually specic
communities) requests. Citizens ask a research question, and in the end discuss the results and ask another
question. Sometimes they can participate in the search segment of the research or interpret the data, or try
to use the research results in practice.
–Contributory projects: the projects are designed by scientists; volunteers primarily collect samples or upload
data and provide them to the scientists for further processing.
–Collaborative projects: citizens collect data for a project designed by scientists and they also help analyse data,
rene the project or disseminate the results.
–Co-Created projects: is a higher model of collaboration where citizens help select a research topic, compile
hypotheses or analyse data and interpret results, which means that some public participants are actively
involved in the entire process of scientic research. Sometimes, professional scientists have more of a con-
sultative role, in the sense they are available at any stage of the project as consultants.
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–Collegial projects (2012): are those where citizens conduct research that creates scientic knowledge indepen-
dently of the scientic community.
In citizen science projects, a dual feature of the participants’activity can also be observed. Some projects are
based on a passive design where volunteers have to be active only at the beginning: special software that
uses unused processing power has to be installed into a personal computer. If thousands of volunteers pro-
vide this spare computing power, researchers can exploit it for computing tasks that would never be realized
even with the most powerful computer. These distributed computing projects can be represented by, e.g. the
project SETI@home whose purpose is to analyse radio signals searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelli-
gence (University of California, 2018). SETI@home was introduced for public access in 1999 and along with
MilkyWay@home and Einstein@home, it is one of three major computing projects which have a focus on the
investigation of interstellar space as their primary purpose. This kind of participation is an extreme case that
is sometimes not regarded as citizen science because there is a lack of active contribution by the participants
(compare the White Paper, Sanz et al., 2014). However other authors classify volunteered computing in the rst
level of citizen science because the volunteers must show at least the will to install the appropriate software and
their willingness to contribute to scientic results in the end do help researchers, although only by passively
providing computer power. Haklay (2013) puts volunteered computing in the rst level (“crowdsourcing”) be-
side projects in which volunteers carry sensors and passively gather data that are later given to researchers for
analysis. This design of the experiment is quite controlled, where the reliability of the data can be expected.
Haklay’s second category is “distributed intelligence”which involves some basic training, after which volun-
teers collect data or carry out a simple interpretation activity. “Participatory science”is similar to the co-created
projects described above: it is mostly community science, common in environmental justice cases, where scien-
tists provide consultations, and help in analysing and interpreting the data. In the last “extreme citizen science”
projects, scientists are rather in the role of experts and facilitators, while volunteers perform the entire research
project.
Where, what and how to do citizen science
The rise of projects that enable volunteers to contribute to scientic research goes hand in hand with the im-
provement of technological personal devices and the accessibility of wi-. Many recent projects are based on
recording the data online with specic software for which a mobile phone with internet access is needed. The
project topics reect mostly those in which the data can easily be collected and/or recorded and are interesting
or challenging for volunteers in some way. The topics are often biological, environmental and astronomical
where there is an easy way to use the citizens’power, such as recording observation data, or analysing or cat-
egorizing photographs. In the natural sciences, fewer projects can be found on chemistry topics (e.g. mapping
aerosols Snik et al., 2014; specic projects are mentioned in the next chapter) or mathematics (e.g. Cranshaw
& Kittur, 2011). Follett and Strezov (2015) analysed all published articles concerning citizen science (excluding
crowdsourcing projects) from 1997 until 2014 available on the Webof Science and Scopus, which means in peer-
reviewed journals. The majority of the projects were biological, namely avian and terrestrial invertebrates. The
number of articles was rapidly increasing (years 1997–1999: 3 articles, 2012–2014: 333 articles) and we dare to
state that the trend was similar in the last four years, 2014–2018. This indicates that citizen science projects are
becoming popular and/or available to the broader public (due to the accessibility of smartphones and wi-)
and that professional scientists have accepted the citizen science research design and the reliability of the data
that are produced in such projects.
Volunteers have many opportunities where to nd a possibility to contribute to scientic research. In the
last decade, several associations gathering ongoing projects or stakeholders have been established. For Europe,
the European Citizen Science Association is relevant (ECSA, 2018). The ECSA provides contacts to organiza-
tions that perform citizen science in Europe. The popular international project platform Zooniverse.org (2018)
was developed by the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA, 2018), a collaboration of scientists, software developers,
and educators. In the United States, an oicial government website supporting citizen science across the U.S.,
Citizenscience.gov (2018) has been established. Its catalogue enables one to choose from dozens of projects
according to one’s desired topic.Citizenscience.org (2018)is a platform that brings experts in citizen science
together, such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and publishes an open-access, peer-reviewed journal, Citizen
Science: Theory and Practice (CSTP, 2018). The last example, SciStarter.com (2019), is a platform supported by the
National Science Foundation and Arizona State University’s Center for Engagement and Training in Science
and Society. SciStarter provides more than 2000 formal and informal projects and events, moreover it oers a
place to record contributions or gain tools and instruments that can be used in citizen science projects.
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Citizen science projects are a good opportunity for collecting a vast amount of long-term data or data spread
out over a large area. Such data are impossible to collect for a small team of researchers, but informed citizens
can contribute a great deal of data that can be used for further analysis. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a de-
partment at Cornell University that has more than two decades of experience in leading citizen science projects.
In 2009, Bonney and colleagues (2009b) published a model where 9 steps for developing a citizen science project
are described. First of all, it is important to choose a scientic question, preferably with a large spatial or tempo-
ral scope (1). Then it is essential to set up a team of experts from various disciplines, such as scientist, educator,
technologist or evaluator (2). Most of the projects use protocols and supporting educational materials that have
to be developed, tested and rened into a nal form (3). The recruitment of the participants (4) is a key point of
the project, as a lack of cooperating volunteers decreases the success of the project. Participants must be sup-
ported with project materials and trained in data-collection (5). This training can be very simple, according to
the nature of the project and the type of data, in the form of text and eventual demonstrations. For more com-
plex projects, participation in a workshop may be required. Once the project is active, the data collection phase
begins (6), for ornithological projects, maps with occurrences are typical. Analysis and interpretation of data
(7) are usually performed by experts. The dissemination of results (8) is the next important part of the project:
not only in professional journals but also through technical reports, popular literature, newsletters and other
channels. An integral part is the discovery of project impacts (9), not only in the eld of scientic contributions
but also in science literacy in the public.
Demographic and educational aspects of citizen science
Until recently, citizen science was presented mostly in the terms of the scientic results that were obtained due
to the contribution of citizen scientists. Background information about the participants and potential research
on them was not the centre of interest. However, there were a few research projects that analysed secondary
information (e.g. Trumbull, Bonney, Bascom, & Cabral, 2000). Edwards (2014) reviews the educational back-
ground information and concludes that from a lifelong learning research perspective, deeper research concern-
ing, e.g. motivation, educational qualication or subject background needs to be performed. However, we do
have research that studies the background of the participants in citizen science projects. Raddick et al. devoted
two studies to participants in the Galaxy Zoo project. In an earlier study (Raddick et al., 2010), 12 motivation
categories for contributing to a project were identied. In a later online survey (Raddick et al., 2013), the mo-
tivation, together with the demographic data of more than 11,000 volunteers, were studied. More than 82 %
were men, with a signicant number of male participants between the ages of 50 and 65. The authors discuss
the reason for participation which points to the topic studied –astronomy, because such age group is promi-
nent also in participants in amateur astronomy (Price & Paxson, 2012 as cited in Raddick et al., 2013). Other
demographic results state that volunteers came from countries with higher levels of per capita gross national
product (the USA and UK, home to 65 % of volunteers) and more than 50 % of participants graduated from
tertiary education. Other studies focused on the demographical data of volunteers (Hurley, Wilson, & Christie,
2008) in various civic movements show that age, education, gender, and socio-economic status play a signi-
cant role in the participation in volunteering. Raddick and colleagues (2013) were also surprised by the results
on motivation: 40 % of volunteers simply wanted to contribute to research, 12 % were interested in astronomy,
but only 1.6 % wanted to learn something new or be a part of a community (0.2 %). This does not correspond
to the results of a study made by Rotman et al. (2012), who focused deeply on motivation: their sample had 142
responses and 18 of them were later interviewed. The results of Rotman et al. show that especially initial interest
is mostly related to egoism (they want to improve their personal scientic knowledge of a specic domain). On
the other hand, it seems that personal interest and the personal gain of the volunteers’motivation can change
rapidly, even after a partial task. Therefore, it is crucial to facilitate the volunteers during the project so that
they stay on and contribute to the project continuously, and what is even more important: they will be open to
contributing to another project.
Another two aspects of citizen science are lifelong learning and early school leaving: two phenomena that
have evolved in recent years in the context of the demographic development of European society and the trans-
formation of the labour market. Reducing early school leaving below 10 % is one of the key objectives of the
Europe 2020 Strategy (European Commission, 2018). In 2018, the average percentage of early school leavers
across the European Union was 10.6 %, with the most in Spain (17.9 %) and Malta (17.5 %); the Czech Repub-
lic had a percentage of 6.2 % who quit basic education (Eurostat, 2018). The concept of citizen science, where
the public engages in real scientic research, seems to have great potential for popularizing science among the
general public, including in younger pupils, which may well be reected in compulsory schooling. Similarly,
citizen science may encourage lifelong learning, although Edwards (2014) feels there is a lack of evidence. Dur-
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ing participation in a citizen science project, it is often necessary to become familiar with relevant information
on the topic and to follow a prescribed methodology. The research of Trumbull et al. (2000) shows how non-
scientist participants cultivate their scientic thinking. During a Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology project,
namely a seed preference test, researchers received 700 informal letters, most often describing data collection
experiences. Nearly 80 % of these letters showed characteristics of thinking processes similar to those used by
professional scientists.
All of this evidence is heading towards a presumption that citizen science improves scientic literacy. How-
ever, the research conducted on this is ambiguous. As mentioned above, Trumbull et al. (2000) detected evi-
dence of scientic thinking in more than 700 letters sent to the research team during the seed preference test
project. Nevertheless, the rst phase of the study, when participants answered one decontextualized item, did
not show any signicant dierence between participating and nonparticipating citizens in scientic literacy.
Cronje, Rohlinger, Crall, and Newman (2011) argue that existing studies such as Trumbull et al. (2000) and
Brossard, Lewenstein, and Bonney (2005) or others (see references in Cronje et al., 2011) may suer from a lack
of an instrument that would be sensitive to the gains that citizens embrace in projects. Therefore, their team
developed four-item contextualized instrument with an open-ended format to assess scientic understand-
ing during the monitoring of an invasive plant species. They also used the non-contextualized item from the
Brossard et al. (2005) to compare the results. Before and after the two-day event, 57 participants answered the
questions and so did the control group (90 participants interested in the project, but unable to attend the training
session). The pre-tests of the control group and trainees were not signicantly dierent in the non-contextual
or contextual items. Also, no shift was detected in the results of the post-test on the non-contextual item. Yet,
the post-test scores on contextualized items were signicantly higher than on the pre-test. The results indicate
that more emphasis should be put on the assessment instruments so that the results are more sensitive (Cronje
et al., 2011). On the other hand, Cronje et al. agree with Brossard et al. (2005) that the results can reect the par-
ticipants’motivation: they participated in the project probably because of the issue itself rather than to learn
about the scientic process. Similar ndings can be found in the Crall et al. (2012). The data was collected before
and after a one-day training session within a citizen science programme on invasive species (166 participants,
48 non-participants). The positive changes in content knowledge, science literacy, process skill and intention to
pro-environmental activities were found in context-specic measures. No changes in attitudes toward science
and the environment were explained by the fact that the citizen scientists themselves have positive attitudes to-
ward the environment compared to the general public, furthermore, changes in attitudes among adults require
more interventions over a long period of time (Crall et al., 2012).
Even though it seems citizen science projects cannot guarantee improvement, they have a possible positive
impact on scientic literacy and, nally, represent a method for public informal education. This feature can be
utilized in science education where authentic science learning is welcome.
Citizen science in science/chemistry education and educational research
In her essay (2011), Linda Jenkins discusses approaches to science classes: she argues that the traditional method
of transmission of facts mainly results in “non-science”people failing to understand science. She divides stu-
dents into groups of “scientist”,“excluded”and “non-scientist”and stresses that science educators will have to
change their way of teaching if they want to change how science is perceived by non-scientist students. In her
opinion, science classes taught with a humanistic philosophy will clarify the role of science outside the class-
room. In her experience, one way to make science relevant to the larger population can be including citizen
science in science education, because then even abstract concepts, such as pH, become more meaningful for
students (Jenkins, 2011).
For a better understanding, we can sum up and reduce the principles of citizen science relevant for science
education: citizens/students contribute to a scientic research project mostly by collecting the data and/or
analysing the data. They stay in quite close contact with scientists who are providing feedback and therefore the
students get to know the relevant scientic problem and how the scientic process is employed. This approach
should represent a win-win strategy, because scientists gain data that could hardly be collected by a small
research group and this data afterwards forms a unique science outcome. On the other hand, students see the
relevance of science studies and in some projects the relationship with citizens is more individual: scientists
share their expertise and professional experience with middle- and high-school students so that young people
can imagine themselves as engineers or scientists. It can have a positive impact on students’motivation to
engage in science and their later career choice (see Bombaugh, 2000). The positive eect on students’motivation
and all social cognitive constructs was studied in a citizen science programme on horseshoe crabs and using
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six dierent scales it was conrmed that informal natural science learning increases student achievement and
career motivation (Hiller & Kitsantas, 2014).
Probably the most relevant project for chemistry and science education is the GLOBE (The Global Learning
and Observations to Benet the Environment) programme, established in 1995 (GLOBE, 2019). Although it
was not classied as a citizen science programme, the goal and vision of GLOBE is without a doubt within
the framework of citizen science principles: students and the public can participate in data collection and the
scientic process that create real scientic outcomes that help foster an understanding of the Earth’s system and
the global environment. Students can collect data in dierent “spheres”: atmosphere, biosphere (land cover),
hydrosphere, pedosphere (soil); and the Earth as a system. Each study area requires a dierent amount of
sampling, from simple measurement to daily measurement. The programme oers rich support not just for
participants (mostly students) but also for teachers, such as a teacher’s guide or classroom activities. Other
examples of science, namely chemistry projects can be found on the website SciStarter.com, where 84 projects
concerning chemistry can be selected. Projects dier in project skills, average time, age group or the type of
activity, as well as the frequency of sampling. For example, the Northwest Wisconsin Groundwater Monitoring
Project (SciStarter.com, 2019) gathers samples of private well water collected just once, to obtain the data on
uoride and selected metals. Another project, AQTreks (SciStarter.com, 2019), focusing on air pollution, takes
part outdoors and the samples are to be collected every few days by a Personal Air Monitor. This project also
requires participants to buy the monitor. A third example of a SciStarter project can be the iWittness Pollution
Map (SciStarter.com, 2019) that gathers eyewitness reports and photos of pollution in Louisiana, in the United
States. These three examples show the variety of the projects, e.g. regarding the equipment: some projects
provide essential equipment (a sampling kit in Groundwater), in some projects participants have to buy the
equipment themselves (a personal monitor in AQTreks), or no equipment is needed (iWitness). Some projects
are based on objective analysis (Groundwater, AQTreks), others focus on subjective measurement (iWitness). A
dierent example of a citizen science project that collects subjective measurements can be CITI-SENSE (CITI-
SENSE.eu, 2019) coordinated by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU).
All citizen science projects have the same feature: the participants, citizen scientists, learn to understand
the nature of science, knowingly or unknowingly. When we focus on students, they learn how to perform the
experiment –such as how to ask questions, search for the answers, and suggest hypotheses. Most of the activities
are carried out in the natural world, as an extra-curricular activity, in the natural context of ordinary lives.
Many of the citizen science projects are global, nevertheless, within an educational context local projects
are welcome. Students contributing to science on the local level can be more in personal contact with experts
and in fact shadow the scientic process. As mentioned above, this may have a crucial impact on the students’
career choices. A tip for such school-university cooperation can be project-based learning that involves an ex-
perimental part: e.g. a project based on waste sorting can measure, for example, how many kg of waste have
been sorted and therefore what and how can be converted to some chemical quantity (e.g. a mass of element,
a percentage of an element or compound wasted). Monitoring of food waste can be an interesting topic as it
can be related to the consumption of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. Food waste means the wasting of
nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins) on one hand, while the soil suers from the lack of nutrients. Chem-
ical aspects are present in environmental measurements (the pH of precipitation) or environmental topics –
climate change, carbon dioxide production, acid deposits. Citizen science projects enable a holistic view of a
certain topic where chemistry is not an isolated sum of facts, but is contextualized within a real-life problem.
Moreover, the citizen science concept can also be used in educational research. Data collected on the present
state of chemistry/science education can form a relevant basis for formal improvements in education, such as
revisions in school plans or revisions to the national curriculum.
Conclusion
Citizen science has been an increasing method design that plays an important role in informal science educa-
tion. The technological boom at the end of the 20th century supported the design of rather passive projects,
recognized as volunteered computing. Later, when personal smart devices began to become aordable, many
active projects emerged. Participants in such projects collect the data via specic applications that send the data
to creators of the applications, researchers. The results that are widely collected all over the world can, therefore,
be analysed and interpreted on a deeper level because of their number, heterogeneity, and authenticity. The in-
volvement of the public in the scientic process has several advantages. It is a source of a great amount of data,
that could not be collected by a single research team. Moreover, the engagement of citizens increases scientic
literacy, lifelong learning and bridges the gap between the professional scientist community and the public.
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Once students experience cooperation with professional scientists, they become familiar with their methods
and some may consider being a natural scientist as a potential future job.
For (chemistry) educators, citizen science represents a methodology that brings new qualitative data regard-
ing, e.g. the educational beliefs of learners, parents and educators. The results of such research will broaden
the reection of scientic education and could even be used in educational policy.
Acknowledgement
This work has been supported by Charles University Research Centre programme No. UNCE/HUM/024.
Notes
1“…projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to answer real-world questions”.
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