Civic Education and Citizen Science

Abstract

The first goal of this chapter is to propose a slight re-framing of citizen science, which will contextualize the information presented in the rest of the book. The authors propose a perspective on and a definition for citizen science (which is alternative to the numerous previously documented definitions) as: “work undertaken by civic educators together with citizen communities to advance science, foster a broad scientific mentality, and/or encourage democratic engagement, which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems”. By explaining the rationale behind this definition, the authors also hope to raise awareness of the role that the meaning of words and phrases (semantics) plays in understanding and supporting citizen science. A second goal of this chapter is to explain how different organizations already use certain software solutions to organize knowledge about citizen science, how these systems can be classified and how they can facilitate or impede interoperability – the ability of humans and machines to pass information between each other.