Elementary teachers’ use of educative support materials for citizen science projects: affordances, obstacles, and impacts

Formidable obstacles constrain elementary teachers’ efforts to provide science instruction that creates opportunities for students to engage with science. These include limited instructional time, inadequate access to high-quality instructional materials and professional learning, and teachers’ self-efficacy. Citizen science, or community science, supports teachers by offering ways to engage students in science and in collecting and interpreting data connected to students’ lives. While citizen science projects emphasise gathering accurate data fundamental for scientific success, they may not align with teacher needs. Using Remillard’s model of teachers’ participatory relationship with curriculum materials, we studied how project-specific educative supports could facilitate teachers’ use of citizen science projects in formal settings. We selected two projects and developed educative support materials. We present data from 52 teachers in a randomised controlled trial investigating (1) how teachers used the materials and (2) how the materials impacted use. Access to project-specific educative supports has a large positive effect on teachers’ and students’ use, and teachers value some supports more than others. We situate our work in research on teachers’ relationship with instructional materials, design of educative curriculum materials, and school-based citizen science. We discuss the implications for project designers, science education researchers, and science teacher educators.