Beyond Citizen Science: Models for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, and STEM Education
Abstract
With the emergence of a GeoHealth research paradigm, environmental geochemists are collaborating with a widening array of stakeholders from clinicians to public health officials, individual citizens, and not-for-profit organizations. These nascent networks are powerful engines for transdisciplinary efforts to improve public health and address environmental justice issues. However, the framing of initial questions and funding sources can distort the evolving relationship between stakeholders during the program of study and affect how research findings are disseminated.
Over the past 15 years our research group has collaborated on five different multi-stakeholder projects that have been initiated, executed, and communicated using a range of research models including several citizen science projects. Developing urban agriculture best practices in the presence of legacy lead contaminated soils is one research thread that has involved collaboration with citizen groups, a large established not-for-profit, and city officials. We have become increasingly aware of the role that situated knowledge plays in our research in terms of identifying the crucial questions to ask. We strive to employ a Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework to support creative community inquiries and partnerships. In a PAR framework, no person's participation is given greater value due to access to specialized knowledge or resources (e.g. analytical capabilities). We have found this research style improves accessibility to opportunities in STEM careers for underrepresented minority undergraduates through collaboration with community stakeholders. The explicit intent to create positive change and redistribute power differentiates PAR from the more traditional frameworks for scientific inquiries that claim objectivity. The PAR research model can be logistically challenging, but its dynamic and inclusive structure enables systemic changes in communities and may result in "serendipitous science" with wider implications beyond the focus case study.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGH32A..01B
- Keywords:
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- 0478 Pollution: urban;
- regional and global;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 1094 Instruments and techniques;
- GEOCHEMISTRYDE: 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTH