Editorial: Citizen Science and Social Innovation: Mutual Relations, Barriers, Needs, and Development Factors

The presented Research Topic explores the potential of citizen science to contribute to the development of social innovations. It sets the ground for analysis of mutual relations between two strong and embedded in the literature concepts: citizen science and social innovation. Simultaneously, the collection opens a discussion on how these two ideas are intertwined, what are the significant barriers, and the need to use citizen science for social innovation

Editorial: Citizen Science and Social Innovation: Mutual Relations, Barriers, Needs, and Development Factors

The presented Research Topic explores the potential of citizen science to contribute to the development of social innovations. It sets the ground for analysis of mutual relations between two strong and embedded in the literature concepts: citizen science and social innovation. Simultaneously, the collection opens a discussion on how these two ideas are intertwined, what are the significant barriers, and the need to use citizen science for social innovation

Citizen Science and Social Innovation: Mutual Relations, Barriers, Needs, and Development Factors

Social innovations are usually understood as new ideas, initiatives, or solutions that make it possible to meet the challenges of societies in fields such as social security, education, employment, culture, health, environment, housing, and economic development. On the one hand, many citizen science activities serve to achieve scientific as well as social and educational goals. Thus, these actions are opening an arena for introducing social innovations. On the other hand, some social innovations are further developed, adapted, or altered after the involvement of scientist-supervised citizens in research and with the use of the citizen science tools and methods such as action research, crowdsourcing, and community-based participatory research. Such approaches are increasingly recognized as crucial for gathering data, addressing community needs, and creating engagement and cooperation between citizens and professional scientists. However, there are also various barriers to both citizen science and social innovation. For example, management, quality and protection of data, funding difficulties, non-recognition of citizens’ contributions, and limited inclusion of innovative research approaches in public policies. In this volume, we open theoretical as well as empirically-based discussion, including examples, practices, and case studies of at least three types of relations between citizen science and social innovation: domination of the citizen science features over social innovation aspects; domination of the social innovation features over the citizen science aspects; and the ways to achieve balance and integration between the social innovation and citizen science features. Each of these relationships highlights factors that influence the development of the main scales of sustainability of innovations in the practice. These innovations are contributing to a new paradigm of learning and sharing knowledge as well as interactions and socio-psychological development of participants. Also, there are factors that influence the development of platforms, ecosystems, and sustainability of innovations such as broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation; emerging healthcare and health promotion models; advancements in the development and governance of smart, green, inclusive and age-friendly cities and communities; new online learning centers; agri-food, cohousing or mobility platforms; and engagement of citizens into co-creation or co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental organizations as well as non-formal entities

Facilitating Cross-border Self-directed Collaborative Learning: The iCamp Case

This paper reports a case study on cross-border collaborative problem-based learning. The case study took place within the scope of the FP6 project called iCamp (1, 2), a project on technology-enhanced learning. In the framework of the project there was organized a trial where students of four universities across Europe participated in the collaborative learning exercise using various electronic tools for communication. In line with the principle of self-directed learning teachers were given in this exercise a role of the facilitator rather than provider of knowledge. This paper focuses on facilitation related aspects of the trial. The paper is intended to give an overview of the trial and to provide an informal evaluation of the trial to draw results to be used in the trials.status: publishe

Evolution in European and Israeli school curricula – a comparative analysis

The contribution of school curricula to public understanding and acceptance of evolution is still mostly unknown, due to the scarcity of studies that compare the learning goals present in different curricula. To overcome this lack of data we analysed 19 school curricula (18 European and one from Israel) to study the differences regarding the inclusion of learning goals targeting evolution understanding. We performed a quantitative content analysis using the Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts (FACE). For each country/region we analysed what this educational system considered the minimum evolution education a citizen should get. Our results reveal that: (i) the curricula include less than half of the learning goals considered important for scientific literacy in evolution; (ii) the most frequent learning goals address basic knowledge of evolution; (iii) learning goals related with the processes that drive evolution are often not included or rarely mentioned; (iv) evolution is most often not linked to its applications in everyday life. These results highlight the need to rethink evolution education across Europe.</p