Engagement Working Group

Within each of our programs, we also conduct research on how youth and adults come to think of themselves as someone who can understand and use science about the boreal forest. We often experiment with the program design elements and measure the learning outcomes. We share our results in talks and publications so others can learn from our work. Some sample of the types of questions we ask and the papers we publish are below:

What do educators and community leaders in Alaska want and need for citizen-science based climate change education programs?

Spellman et al. (2018) assessed the interests, desired benefits, and support needs of formal teachers, informal educators (like 4-H leaders), and community members in rural and Indigenous Alaska to inform the design of citizen science–based climate change learning programs. They found that locally relevant climate challenges motivated all audiences. The research further indicated that all audiences wanted opportunities for youth to engage with culturally responsive climate science and NASA/GLOBE citizen science, but that they needed training, resources, and collaboration supports to successfully implement such programs. These results guided development of the Arctic and Earth SIGNs model, emphasizing community-school collaboration, inclusion of elders and scientists, culturally grounded curricula, and action-oriented stewardship linked to citizen science data.

Does art-science integration through storytelling influence science learning and youth's sense of environmental agency?

Spellman, Cost and Villano (2021) tested a scenario-storytelling workshop paired with a youth-focused wild berry community and citizen science program and found that this approach helped participants apply their own data to imagine future outcomes and potential stewardship actions. The method fostered key sustainability thinking skills—such as systems, futures, and strategic thinking—and helped many youth groups pursue continued monitoring, share results, and engage in additional community science activities. However, fewer groups translated their scenario ideas into concrete stewardship actions, suggesting further practice is needed to strengthen youths’ sense of themselves as agents of environmental change.

Does the level of co-creation of citizen and community science projects influence the outcomes for the youth involved?

In Clement, Spellman et al. (2023), the authors compared two community and citizen science (CCS) models—contributory versus co-created—to assess how youth participation influenced their science self-efficacy and interest across two Alaska projects. Youth in co-created CCS projects, where they had greater decision-making power in the scientific process, reflected more frequently and deeply on increases in their confidence to do science, while science interest grew for youth in both models regardless of design. These findings suggest that redistributing power and agency to youth in CCS can enhance their science self-efficacy, and that participation in authentic CCS projects broadly engages and excites youth about science learning.

Greendown Art and Athabascan Values