One of the greatest barriers to understanding science as a culture is its perceived “exclusive participation”.  To some people, participating in the community of science requires a degree, or a great deal of specific, formal knowledge concerning the area of study. But the Citizen Science article showed that people not formally involved in the greater scientific community can still be called upon to contribute. The volunteers who participated in Citizen Science projects had at least a casual interest in science and some understanding of the scientific method. This shows two things – that members of the public may have more involvement in science than they give themselves credit for and that utilizing members of the public for scientific endeavors may involve them in the scientific community as a whole.

For many, science is defined as whatever subjects were labeled as “science” in school. This fairly rigid definition persists past formal education. Even if they’re in a job that’s heavily involved in science, like architecture or medicine, or a hobby like bird watching or hiking, there’s this mental divide between science and what they do. Projects like Citizen Science help break down this mental restriction and help people realize that science isn’t just what’s around them, but it’s something they’re already doing.

For researchers, projects like Citizen Science are effective as an ambassadorial initiative and as a tool. The aforementioned mental divide also puts science in the role of “the other”, as something not to be intuitively trusted, and makes advances in science harder to embrace. By encouraging people to involve themselves in science and immerse themselves in the community, we can encourage the view that science is something that you can trust intuitively, once you understand the inherent safeguards that go with the scientific method.

While reading Chapter 2 of Surrounded by Science, two things caught my attention: the image of the stereotypical scientist, “male, white, isolated and removed from the real world” and my general impression on the strands of informal science learning. I realized that stereotypical scientist they described was identical to my initial thought of a scientist. I always thought that this image gave off a sense of unapproachability and seclusion. To some extent, I think this stereotype is responsible for the distant, closed-off impression of science that some people possess. It’s unfortunate, considering that scientists could be anyone, in any sort of place, and intensely connected to the “real world”. What comes to mind are anthropologists and other practitioners of social sciences.

Social sciences require a great deal of involvement with the community. Even traditional sciences require  some kind of physical/personal involvement. For example, environmental biologists need to get close and personal with the natural world they’re studying. In fact, it could be because of this image that some people don’t realize that they’re involved in science. The stereotypical scientist is the person they think of when asked who does science, and they don’t really recognize that they’re scientists themselves.

The six strands themselves really intrigued me. As I was looking over them, I was thinking of popular science programs such as Mythbusters, and I realized that they use these strands. Mythbusters, in particular, definitely sparks interest and excitement, uses the tools and language of science, and they utilize scientific reasoning in order to prove or disprove myths. What really makes me think is that they don’t push it as science – it just seems perfectly natural. From there, I realized that this is how science should be thought of – not as an external, isolated field, but an incredibly natural process that is so intrinsic that it’s actually odd to point it out.

Adriel Paderanga 

On the whole, I found this article fascinating as I focused on two points in particular – the “U-shaped pattern of Americans’ comparative performance on science literacy measures,” (488) and the importance of “free-choice learning” (486), which is credited for supplying the scientific education for the other 95% of our lives.

Science, in its simplest definition and form, is an ordered line of questioning designed to answer why “something” happens in the environment. It requires a curiosity that comes with early childhood, but is quickly quashed in many as they approach their tweens. I believe that after a certain age, many children disassociate that intrinsic curiosity from the results it produces. Science becomes something to be memorized and discarded at semester’s end, not internalized for the satisfaction of learning. The focus shifts from “learning for its own sake” to “learning for the grade”. It’s for this reason I think that elementary U.S. students outperform their counterparts on TIMSS and PISA, perform at a mediocre level in middle school/high school, and do better in college. Relative to how I learned in elementary and how I’m learning now, in college, I struggled to finish my work in any science-related courses such as biology and mathematics. Before, I’d read my textbook for the pleasure of it, and then it became a chore, work to be avoided until absolutely necessary.  Science in school was divorced from reality.

In college, I had the freedom to choose my own courses, and with that came a sense of ownership and subsequent responsibility regarding the course matter.  In making that choice, I started to regain some of the curiosity I possessed in childhood. Learning was still work, but my fascination with the information I gained made it much more bearable. I’m reminded of Tom Sawyer and his fence. He managed to make his friends enjoy the drudgery of fence painting by pretending it was fun. Mindset is everything when it comes to learning, and if we can change the K-12 education system to incorporate more freedom in course selection with regards to science, I imagine we’d see an increase in performance. Which shouldn’t be the end goal, but is a nice bonus all the same.