Citizen science – bridging the gap between scientists and amateurs

Abstract

AbstractThe 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 scientific 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 scientific 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.