Community Science

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Together we hope to advance timely answers to the questions "How do we improve our schools to work for all?" and "How do we improve our communities to work for all?" that are yet applicable to diverse improvement efforts everywhere.

What is Community Science?

Community science is a broad term for democratic approaches to improving a wide range of aims, including academic learning and human and community development. When practiced as an open science, it can also inform improvement and learning in peer communities (and vice versa).

School-based Community Science Labs are interdisciplinary teams working to practice community science. By pairing what matters to the community with the agency, skills and understandings they need to achieve it, community science labs are direction generating. Click the image below for higher resolution.

We promote a School Portrait Framework to help students learn about and connect diverse themes of improvement. The Framework provides a powerful set of tools to advocate for valued change while connecting with the shared purpose of others.

For example:

High school students in a project learning block seeking to improve their school experience started with a broad list of ideas - better lunch fare, cleaner locker rooms, a dedicated student lounge, a school store where the graduating class could earn money, and more. The school's history was also of interest to some students (who are the students in the pictures in the hallways, and the one's missing, the one's who went to WWII?). And what about the compost program? Our Evolving Schools facilitator added the behavioral rubric to the list. The current rubric was a perennial sore point among students and faculty. In this marketplace of ideas, the behavioral rubric garnered great interest.

To advance this improvement aim required a new School Governance protocol, new lessons on human behavior relating to the School Curriculum, and an honest assessment of School Culture, all to elevate academics and learning.

After several weeks of activity from students and project block teachers (a Community Science Lab), the new behavior rubric passed with the consent of every student, every one of their subject area teachers, the school dean, school counselor, and school principal.

The School Portrait Framework. Investigating and improving the School Curriculum can be supported by a specialized Educational Design Lab.

What is a Networked Improvement Community?

Central to our theory of change (and project incubation) is the development of Networked Improvement Communities (NICs), which connect Community Science labs to each other to collaboratively identify, test, and refine solutions to local school and community improvement needs.

NICs reinforce our community science approach through structured, evidence-driven processes.

Learn more about Portraits of the Park project
Learn more about our Evolving Schools project

Networked Improvement Communities define networks in three novel ways:

By looking at networks of problems and solutions.
Including one or more full team members from outside of the primary group or organization.
Informing a local theory of improvement based on global network research.

Relevant literature

Boyd, M. R. (2014). Community-Based Research: Understanding the Principles, Practices, Challenges, and Rationale. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199811755.013.006.

Eirdosh, D., Hanisch, S. (2023). A Community Science Model for Inter-disciplinary Evolution Education and School Improvement. In: du Crest, A., Valković, M., Ariew, A., Desmond, H., Huneman, P., Reydon, T.A.C. (eds) Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines. Synthese Library, vol 478. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33358-3_7.

Hanisch, S. & Eirdosh, D. (2020). Educational potential of teaching evolution as an interdisciplinary science. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 13 (25). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-020-00138-4.

Jason, L., & Glenwick, D. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Oxford University Press.

KIDS Consortium. (2001). KIDS as planners: A guide to strengthening students, schools and communities through service-learning. Lewiston, ME, USA.

Strand, K., Marullo, S., Cutforth, N., Stoecker, R., & Donohue, P. (2003). Community-based Research and Higher Education. Principles and Practices. San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass.

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