This issue of Legacy—which had a record number of submissions from interpreters wanting to write on the subject—deals with the challenges of making science accessible, engaging, and relevant to visitors to interpretive sites. How do we take information and ideas that can be highly technical or specicialized to a certain field of study and make it pertinent to visitors whose expertise lies elsewhere? The articles that follow tackle that subject.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alyssa Parker-GeismanTim WatkinsPatrick Kark
Three accredited zoos and aquariums in the Pacific Northwest are collaborating on a project aimed at developing tools to assess program effectiveness in encouraging children's empathy towards animals. This short briefing paper outlines the team's initial work to 1) gain a shared understanding and definition of the construct (empathy towards animals) and how it develops during childhood, and 2) review existing research on the link between empathy and beneficial action towards wildlife, and 3) summarize research findings on best practices towards encouraging empathy.
Modern technology and innovation research needs to analyse and collect users’ requirements from the outset of the project’s design, according to the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach. Bringing in new services without involving end-users in the whole research process does not make for optimal results in terms of scientific, technological and economic impact. This commentary reports on research experience of stakeholder involvement and co-production in Italy, implemented in Earth Observation downstream services at regional level. It reports the participative approach and method
The validity of citizen science conducted by community activists is often questioned because of the overt values that activists bring to their investigations. But value judgments are a necessary part of even the best academic science, and scientists whose findings suggest the need for policy action can learn from the example of citizen scientists. Communicating clearly about value judgments in science would give the public a better basis for distinguishing between responsible and irresponsible research on controversial issues.
With the suite of environmental challenges faced by today’s society growing ever more imminent, the potential role of science and natural history museums as social institutions to promote environmental stewardship is being realized. A recent collaborative effort between the
EcoTarium in Worcester, MA and six other institutions across the country, the NSF funded City Science exhibit serves to introduce the public to new research on human-ecology interactions in urban settings. The project also supports the inclusion of Public Participation in Science Research (PPSR) elements in museum exhibits
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marissa GallantShana HawrylchakJacqueline DeLisa
Citizen science has made substantive contributions to science for hundreds of years. More recently, it has contributed to many articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has influenced natural resource management and environmental protection decisions and policies across the nation. Over the last 10 years, citizen science—participation by the public in a scientific project—has seen explosive growth in the United States and many other countries, particularly in ecology, the environmental sciences, and related fields of inquiry. The goal of this report is to help government agencies and
The National Research Council's Roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences held a 2-day workshop on January 15-16, 2015, in Washington, DC to explore the public interfaces between scientists and citizens in the context of genetically engineered (GE) organisms. The workshop presentations and discussions dealt with perspectives on scientific engagement in a world where science is interpreted through a variety of lenses, including cultural values and political dispositions, and with strategies based on evidence in social science to improve public conversation about controversial topics
Project Exploration’s week-long summer Environmental Adventurers program immersed eleven Chicago Public School middle and high school students into the world of urban bees and biodiversity research. We employed a place-based approach to ground learning experiences and exploration within uniquely urban spaces. Students used mobile technology to explore the environment, document native bees, and engage in authentic fieldwork research and data analysis. Students maximized the potential of the technology in ways that forced program leaders to rethink the potential of mobile technology as an
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jameela JafriGabrielle LyonStephanie MadziarRebecca ToniettoProject ExplorationChicago Botanic GardenNorthwestern University
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have the potential to become a powerful political vision that can support the urgently needed global transition to a shared and lasting prosperity. In December 2014, the United Nations (UN) Secretary General published his report on the SDGs. However, the final goals and targets that will be adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 risk falling short of expectations because of what we call “cockpit-ism”: the illusion that top-down steering by governments and intergovernmental organizations alone can address global problems. In view of the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maarten HajerMans NilssonKate RaworthPeter BakkerFrans BerkhoutYvo de BoerJohan RockstromKathrin LudwigMarcel Kok