Data to decision-making: how elementary students use their Community and Citizen Science project to reimagine their school campus

Youth-focused Community and Citizen Science (CCS) projects are contexts in which youth can contribute to the entire “data lifecycle”––from data-collection to decision-making with their scientific findings. But data alone does not contain the answers for what action to take and how. Using the educational context of an afterschool CCS bird monitoring program for 4th and 5th graders, this ethnographic study investigates the different ways youth identified and understood environmental issues on their school campus. We use a theoretical framework of framing, youth identity and agency to understand youth perspectives of their CCS project purpose or goals, their goal-aligned actions (real or imagined), and their CCS practices. We situate these findings within the instructional context of youth’s bird monitoring project and provide instructional recommendations for CCS projects which position youth as knowledge producers, such as how to support youth in developing rigorous intellectual criteria for evaluating their environmental decisions.