Enhancing Informal Learning Through Citizen Science – Background Literature

Citizen science has grown significantly as an area of activity around the world with many different models of practice and forms of participation. Citizen involvement in science can be seen as part of a long history of the role of the amateur in science. Research in the USA and UK suggests that citizen science has a powerful potential to support participation in and the learning of science. Increasingly, research has sought to explore and measure the development of 'science literacy', science identity and learning outcomes through citizen science. The scale, focus, and organisation of projects have been demonstrated to influence who participates in them, the scientific achievements, and what contributors learn. Such work has led to Phillips et al (2014) User's Guide for Evaluating Learning Outcomes From Citizen Science. This builds upon earlier work, which identified various learning outcomes associated with different approaches to citizen science - contributory, collaborative and cocreated. The Guide describes empirically defined outcomes for citizen science, such as behaviour and stewardship, skills of science inquiry, knowledge of the nature of science, interest in science and the environment, self-efficacy and motivation. This paper attempts to locate the work on learning through citizen science within the wider literature on science education, informal learning and science capital. Such a review is inevitably partial and should be seen as a starting point for further exploration rather than as a definitive statement on learning through citizen science.