Citizen and community science for climate resilience education- linking program design and outcomes in diverse learning environments

Designing climate education experiences for broad audiences that span age levels, formal and informal education settings and cultural groups is a challenging task. Citizen and community science (CCS) is a powerful tool for climate learning. Participants in climate change related CCS projects can gain scientific knowledge and science process skills while simultaneously helping generate new scientific knowledge that could be used for climate planning or action at community or regional scales. Here we describe methods for citizen and community science program design that can help achieve these goals. Using lessons learned and evaluation data from three projects based out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, we explore successful strategies for improving youth science and stewardship self-efficacy, and promoting youth action on climate change issues. Strategies explored include co-created community projects, culturally responsive curricula, storytelling, linking data to local action, and flexible implementation of participation levels and learning goals for diverse youth groups.