Through this review of research on public engagement with science, Feinstein, Allen, and Jenkins advocate supporting students as “competent outsiders”—untrained in formal sciences, yet using science in ways relevant to their lives. Both formal and informal settings can be well suited for work in which students translate scientific content and practices into meaningful actions.
The internet allows sharing of digital data, code, and research articles so that not only scientific results but also the underlying supports and the paths of reasoning are publicly available. It is an opportunity for the public to learn about and participate in “computational and data-driven” citizen science. Informal science educators and communities can facilitate citizen engagement in this work by creating learning experiences that give citizens the skills needed to gain entry into the data of their interest, by working with professional societies to find and create outlets for this study