1.3. Pragmatism: an epistemology to take pluralism into account

1.3.C. Values dynamics: reflecting on the effects of Citizen Science

Question: 

In project A, citizens are only invited to collect data. The observation protocols actually invite them to pay attention to organisms that they may have ignored so far or simply seen without further thinking about their role in the local ecosystems, about their needs, about the evolution of their populations... Thus, while participants start paying attention to birds and hedgehogs in practical terms (first by counting and identifying them, maybe later by changing the way they manage their garden or by creating hosting areas...), participants may actually start to consider that those organisms matter. In this perspective, the CS process has led to the creation of new values related to biodiversity among the participants. Yet, investigating such effects needs to develop adequate tools used beyond the sole objective and timeline of the biodiversity data sampling protocol. Have you ever intended to monitor the effects of a pedagogic sequence on students and on the way they conceive a topic, a given concept, their relation to the world or to other people, and particularly, on the way they define what is important for them ?