Browsing by Subject "Bloomin uudistettu taksonomia"

Citizen science is a research method in which data collection, analysis or other stages of research is distributed to a large number of volunteers. Citizen science enables collection of large-scale data. In addition, in few cases Citizen science has been integrated into formal school education. It has been found to attract students' interest in the subject and research and to teach students about scientific research. However, the real benefits of citizen science for schools have been just scarcely studied. This study explored the experiences of middle school and high school students on the Helsinki Urban Rat Project (Kaupunkirottatutkimus). The research questions were: (1) How do the middle school and high school students who participated in the Urban Rat Project experience citizen science as part of biology teaching? (2.) How do the students who participated in the Urban Rat Project feel about urban rats and how does the Project affect students’ perception of rats? The data was collected by group theme interviews from middle school and high school students who participated in the City Rat Project. The data consisted of nine recorded interviews with a total of 29 interviewees. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed by content analysis. The Urban Rat Project aroused situational interest towards urban rats and research project. Main factors for aroused interest were novelty and specialty of the project, the involvement created by hands-on activities and the meaningfulness created by contextualism of an authentic research. Learning experiences were categorized by Bloom’s revised taxonomy and the results revealed a number of knowledge types and cognitive process categories, suggesting that the project developed a diverse range of students' thinking. Students were able to develop deeper research skills, critically explore research and its outcomes, and learn about practical challenges and constraints of scientific research. Urban rats gave rise to both negative, positive and neutral feelings among students. The negative emotions were caused by a variety of causes, such as the appearance and behavior of rats, culture created attitudes and students own experiences. Positive feelings were caused by interest toward rats and good experiences with pets. The knowledge learned in the study about urban rats generally reduced negative feelings and in one case aroused them, but many interviewees also felt that the study had no effect on their attitude towards rats, because interaction with rats was not concrete enough during the project and the students were disappointed that they did not see rats or rat footprints. The authentic research context of citizen science such as Urban Rat Project can increase meaningfulness to studying biology, which is not necessarily achieved by other teaching methods and may teach the realities of scientific research better than traditional practical work. In addition, citizen science can provide knowledge and nature experiences that allow learners to reflect on their relationship with nature. In order to achieve nature-related learning goals of the school education, citizen science projects should pay particular attention to the concreteness of the interaction between learners and nature and to the students' experiences in nature during citizen science.