Lil' Scientist
The school curriculum is often geared towards teaching the next generation of scientists, but in many ways, children already are natural scientists. Their curiosity pushes them to constantly question the world, and their creativity drives them to novel conclusions. However, too many children believe that science is not for them, especially youngsters coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Lil Scientist project is trying to solve this, engaging children with scientists, and opening up the possibility that they too can research any subject that sparks their curiosity, and create new knowledge in the world.
The Lil Scientist project started within the Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie) and IMC Weekendschools Foundation. The project takes place at the University of Amsterdam, and many other partners are part of the project: the Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University, New Scientist, Brein in Beeld, Pieter Hulst, and NEMO.
It all started three years ago as a master's internship of Birgit Bekker and Lois van Laere. It was based on the idea that if children get the chance to meet scientists and do research themself, that could change their ideas about science and maybe inspire them to pursue a research career. Last year a total of 10 weekend-school locations across the Netherlands joined the Lil Scientist project. The Weekend School offers additional and inspirational education to children from underprivileged backgrounds, gaining knowledge and skills meant to prepare them for life. Children have the opportunity to come in contact with different fields including journalism, medicine, law, philosophy, the arts, astronomy and entrepreneurship.
The Lil Scientist project is based on various scientists with different backgrounds who visit schools and work with children. The citizen science researches of the project cover different topics, such as archeology, linguistics, and biology. This brings students the opportunity to interact with real scientists and it gives them the experience of being a researcher. As well as that, based on these projects, scientists then develop online lesson packages. These are distributed to all primary education in the Netherlands, enabling teachers to easily implement science in their courses.
The Citizen Science approach helps engage students in science while contributing to genuine ongoing research. As well as that, the variety of courses and topics reflects one of the main goals of the project, which is to show how variable and diverse science is. The lessons cover the wide spectrum of Science: natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and Medical Sciences.
One example is World Wrestling (Woord Worstelen), which investigates regional and age-related variation in language. Kids are invited to go out in the street and ask people how they use farewell greetings and the word “fries”. Children can then upload their results on a website and see an overview of the data on a digital map of the Netherlands.
Other examples are “Market” (Markten), about the ethical moral considerations behind peoples buying behavior. Or “Thinking about thinking” (Denken over Denken), which is a neuro-philosophical course about what thinking is and how to research thinking.
Also “Plastics Soup”, which looks at where the plastic comes from, how it ends up in the ocean, and how to solve this problem; and “New Technology”, which is an engineering course about algorithms and about how recommendations, for example, Spotify and YouTube, work.
But the project that best embodies Lil’ Scientist's philosophy is probably “Who is the Scientist” (‘Wie is de Wetenschapper?’), about scientists’ stereotypes. During the class, children are asked to draw what they think a scientist looks like. Later on, they do an analysis of that, by doing a list of the most common, stereotypical characteristic of scientists. Most of the time students draw them as white men in glasses and a lab coat, with impressive laboratory equipment. The image that children often have of scientists is only of people like chemists and physicists. Lil’ Scientist is trying to change this, showing children how scientists and science are a lot more than that.
The ultimate goal is to show science in all its aspects and to picture an inclusive idea of science and scientists, to which everyone can be represented. This is also supported by the Weekend of School’s goals and targets. These students are generally coming from environments that don't come into contact with science as much, and the weekend of schools work with people who wouldn't, from themselves, apply for science courses or for science activities.
Together with its partners, Lil Scientist is working to create an inclusive representation of science, in which everyone can be represented, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, or migration background.
Scientists are pretty enthusiastic to work on this project, and more researchers are joining and preparing new material for the future. Birgit Bekker, a junior researcher at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, was positively surprised to see that. Researchers who aren't citizen scientists, and don't have the funding or the people to set up elaborate research; are still really interested in sharing their research with a new audience and developing materials for this purpose.
For Bekker, the main underlying motivation for citizen science is the empowerment of non-scientists stepping into the shoes of scientists to gain some perspective on what science is.
However, it also has a strong value for the scientists themself, by being a nice way of going out of their academic bubble and academic language. Citizen Science forces you to think about how to discuss scientific topics in a way that sparks a light in people from very different backgrounds and knowledge.
Moreover, working with children often offer scientist a different perspective on looking at the world. They have all kinds of original thoughts and questions, and that can really pull scientists out of their tunnel vision.
Citizen Science can have various forms and can be used for different reasons. For example, it can enable data collections that a researcher couldn’t do individually, or it is used to involve in science a particular group that wouldn’t be involved in it otherwise, or maybe it is just a way to gain different perspectives. Birgit's experience suggests that it is really important to have clear from the start why you want to use citizen science and to really shape the project based on this. Because different goals require different kinds of project organization and infrastructure.