In this module you will learn more about what Youth Focused Community and Citizen Science is, the research based framework for youth engagement in YCCS projects, and best practices associated with engaging students in CCS projects. Students will reflect on how they perceive science and scientists as they are introduced to researchers at the UC Davis Student Farm.

The term “Citizen Science” is getting used in a lot of ways these days as the field has gained greater and greater popularity. And there are lots of other terms that people also use for this same kind of activity, like community-based participatory research, crowd-sourcing, volunteer monitoring, collaborative monitoring, or public participation in scientific research. In these modules, when we say Community and Citizen Science, we’re talking about when members of the public, everyday people and kids, are participating in or collaborating with professional scientists to produce new knowledge, such as engaging in image sorting through crowdsourcing projects through platforms like Zooniverse, monitoring pollinators or their local watershed or submitting photos to more social citizen science projects like iNaturalist. This new information can be used for basic research, environmental monitoring, advocacy, civic action, or any number of other purposes.

At its core, Youth-Focused Community and Citizen Science is all about when young people play a role in creating new scientific knowledge, becoming experts in their local environment, and then using that new knowledge to take action and make change.

The Center for Community and Citizen Science has been working to understand how YCCS might lead to environmental science learning, and how educators can use community and citizen science projects to meet their educational goals. This led to the development of this research-based framework, that helps us as educators think beyond what YCCS activities to do, and consider how to design and facilitate those activities for meaningful student learning.

We will look at this framework in great detail in this and other modules. It is important to note that there are things that are embedded into our community and citizen science - core activities like developing youth expertise - that intersect with key educator practices - such as shifting instruction to position youth as experts. These together facilitate key youth practices, for example, taking ownership of data quality, that lead to learning and environmental science agency. This framework helps us understand how what we do leads to our desired outcomes.

Based on that research- we found that Youth-Focused Community and Citizen science offers and allows the opportunity for youth to:

• Learn about their local environment and community

• Determine what kind of change to create in their community. It gives students an opportunity to shape their local environment

• Opportunity to gain ownership OR feel part of OR have access to “science” (a field that is not always inclusive)

• Contribute to environmental science research

By engaging in a YCCS project, you will see that student engagement is based on authentic real world science, allowing them to truly engage in all three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS. They are working on the practice of analyzing and interpreting data, deepening their content knowledge focused on the disciplinary core ideas, and applying their model of how the system of their school campus functions across a variety of scientific domains. In addition to building their science literacy by engaging in authentic research, students are also aware of the human impact, and the interrelated nature of our ecosystems as they also delve into the Environmental Principles and Concepts or EP&Cs. In all grade levels, K-12, YCCS also allows for not only engagement in all three dimensions of NGGS, but also engagement with Common Core English Language Arts and math standards by giving students a way to apply their learning. Their reading and research has new purpose and meaning, as they begin to realize their own ability to make an impact. An example might be when students are analyzing their data to determine changes that need to be made on their campus to support more biodiversity, they are engaging in both the science and engineering practices in NGSS of arguing from evidence alongside the CCSS skill of making evidence based claims in English Language Arts.