Social Justice, Science Agency, and Collaborations: Using Participatory Science to Enhance Learning Outcomes in Postsecondary STEM Courses

Abstract

Participatory sciences (any science that depends on the knowledge or involvement of the public) are increasingly being included in undergraduate courses. Although they have most often been integrated into undergraduate courses to engage students, we expand ideas of how these approaches can be used to promote student learning. First, we explore three theoretical frameworks, culturally sustaining pedagogy, control value theory, and the ICAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive) framework, that help explain why incorporating participatory science is an effective classroom practice at disrupting opportunity hoarding (a fourth framework). These theories focus on motivating learning, illustrating the power of participatory sciences as a mechanism of inclusive science, and attuning pedagogical practices specifically to participatory science curricula. Second, we use these theories to design a model with three orthogonal axes: science agency, breadth of interaction within classes and with external communities, and social justice. This model is designed to be aspirational for instructors to more fully capture how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals. We hope to promote reflection among instructors and provide ideas for how they can implement participatory science to expose students to research and use evidence-based reasoning to develop solutions for local and global problems.

BACKGROUND

Participatory science is an umbrella term to describe a variety of approaches that depend on knowledge or observations from members of the public. These approaches include participatory research, community-based participatory research, community-engaged research, citizen science, community science, and community-academic partnerships (refer to the descriptions in Table 1 of Davis and Ramírez-Andreotta 2021). Although each of these methods has a unique history and evidence base, they share the active participation of interested community members in at least some part of the scientific process (Strasser et al., 2019). For example, as Cooper et al. (2021) explain, citizen science represents the involvement of individuals in data collection efforts over large geographic and/or temporal scales (Theobald et al., 2015), generally for a project that is created by, and whose data are interpreted by, scientists (Burgess et al., 2017; Cooper et al., 2021). In contrast to this large-scale, academically driven research, community science represents a smaller scale, grassroots model where academics seek to collaborate on, or co-create with, community members on many aspects of the scientific process so that local knowledge and the rights of communities (e.g., about data ownership and sovereignty) are prioritized (Heaney et al., 2007). Community science is also linked to social action to reduce inequities (Wilson et al., 2014). Participatory science has the potential to expand our ideas of who can produce scientific knowledge, what parts of the natural world can be legitimately studied, and how evidence can be produced (Strasser et al., 2019).

Participatory approaches, particularly citizen science, have been described as a way to democratize science, increase scientific literacy, and speed up scientific discoveries. However, evidence indicates that participants do not reflect the diversity of society: most participants are white, middle-class males who are highly educated (Blake et al., 2020; Pateman et al., 2021; Strasser et al., 2023). Although participation in citizen science can lead to increased content knowledge and scientific literacy (refer to review in Ballard et al. (2024)), there is a lack of rigorous research on the types of learning that are most commonly improved or in what contexts this learning is most likely to occur (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). Nonetheless, data collected by participatory research are becoming more commonly accepted as evidence that can be used for scientific discovery (Theobald et al., 2015; Burgess et al., 2017; Gadermaier et al., 2018; de Sherbinin et al., 2021).

Participatory sciences have long been used in informal learning environments, but the past decade has seen increased attention to the potential of these approaches for engaging undergraduate students in formal learning environments and promoting their learning. Incorporating participatory science in the classroom has been proposed as a way to increase research opportunities for students and diminish the use of “throw away” assignments so that students can work toward the common good (Jungck, 2015, 2024). In postsecondary classes, students most commonly participate in data collection and the submission of those data to a project database, but may also use publicly available data to develop hypotheses, practice analyses, and test their hypotheses (Roche et al., 2020; Martek et al., 2022; Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2022; Quinnell et al., 2023; Tan et al., 2024). In one survey, higher education instructors reported that their most common motivations for using participatory science approaches with students were to increase student engagement, expose students to authentic research, and illustrate the relevance of science (Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2022). While instructors generally felt that these outcomes were met, research and rigorous assessment of the impacts on student learning have been very limited (but refer to Vitone et al., 2016; Paradise and Bartkovich, 2021; Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2021). For example, Vitone et al. (2016) found no change in content knowledge after students in an entomology course participated in a citizen science project, but attributed the result to an insufficiently sensitive assessment instrument. In contrast, a pre/post assessment of more than 1200 introductory biology students at three universities showed significant knowledge gains after participating in a project tracking arthropod abundance (Caterpillars Count!; Vance-Chalcraft et al. 2021). Furthermore, Vance-Chalcraft et al. (2021) collected written reflections from approximately 900 students, which showed that students identified benefits to themselves, benefits to the environment, benefits to the community, and data benefits from participation in the project (Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2021). While these results are encouraging, most are qualitative and rely on small sample sizes (Caruso et al., 2016; Aivelo and Huovelin, 2020). It is time, therefore, to consider the various ways that student involvement in participatory sciences can promote learning and how these approaches can be implemented in a way that is consistent with evidence-based teaching practices.

In this article, we describe a set of theoretical foundations for including participatory science in undergraduate biology education. Specifically, we aim to: 1) expand the list of learning outcomes that are generally recognized from participatory science, 2) promote reflection among instructors, and 3) provide ideas for how instructors can operationalize participatory science to meet a wide variety of learning outcomes. Although we discuss how to operationalize these approaches, we do so in the hopes of validating their use and encouraging reflection, instead of trying to create an evidence-based teaching guide for participatory science. Moreover, this paper is not a review of existing participatory science projects, how participatory science has been used in biology classes, or evidence of the effectiveness of these approaches for learning. Extensive, searchable databases exist of current participatory science projects (e.g., scistarter.org, www.zooniverse.org, and citsci.org), some of which even have curated materials available specifically for educators. For more explicit ideas for implementation, the Undergraduate Student Experiences for Citizen Science Network has an archive of lesson plans and other educational resources for using participatory science approaches in undergraduate classes (under “Collections” after you make a free account at https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/usecitsci). Reviews of how participatory science has been used in biology classes and the evidence for their effectiveness have been published previously (Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2022; Ballard et al., 2024). Instead of focusing on what has been done, this article uses theories to design a model that represents aspirational goals supported by robust theoretical justification for enhancing learning through the incorporation of participatory science in postsecondary STEM courses.

We propose that instructors can provide deep learning experiences for their students using participatory science approaches when they undergo curricular planning that is based on a strong theoretical foundation for what they want students to learn, how they are going to motivate students, and how they can best implement these approaches in class. Theories included are those that illustrate the power of participatory sciences as a mechanism of inclusive science, motivational theories of learning, and theories that attune to curricula. Specifically, we describe how culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, and the ICAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive) framework combine to demonstrate why participatory science approaches are effective at disrupting opportunity hoarding. These four theories inform curriculum design, and we focus on the properties of each that are relevant to participatory science. We then integrate these theories into a new model with three dimensions, science agency, breadth of interaction, and social justice, that more fully capture how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals. We represent these dimensions as axes to create a multidimensional space that can guide an instructor's choice of which participatory approach to use in an undergraduate setting. We aim to expand the list of learning outcomes that are generally recognized from participatory science and help inform how instructors could operationalize these approaches.

Relevant Learning Theories

Connecting theory to practice in education can be an important step in understanding why a classroom practice, an educational intervention, or a daily activity is effective. Although college and university instructors report anecdotal benefits to students from participatory science approaches in their classes (Adams et al., 2012; Cardamone and Lobel, 2016; Gerhart et al., 2021; Golumbic and Motion, 2021; Hitchcock et al., 2021), the theoretical basis that could lead to these gains is not well understood. No single theory, or even single set of theories, is sufficient to fully describe the theoretical underpinnings for participatory science approaches. Therefore, we focus on three theories—culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, and the ICAP framework—that synergize into aspects of the classroom experience instructors seek to optimize: inclusive science, motivation, and pedagogy. These three theories converge to demonstrate why participatory science approaches are effective at disrupting opportunity hoarding (a fourth theory). These theories are relevant, but not exhaustive, and we use them to explain why incorporating participatory sciences in post-secondary STEM courses may produce learning gains.

These theories inform an instructor's planning for what they want their students to learn, students’ motivation to learn, and what students are doing to learn. Although participatory science approaches have been integrated into courses to engage students, learn science content, or gain scientific process skills, there are other potential learning outcomes that could be achieved. For example, equitable and inclusive teaching is a stated goal of 21st-century teaching ([AAAS] American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2011; Dewsbury and Brame, 2019; Seymour and Hunter, 2019; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025). Participatory science can help reach this goal for several reasons. We focus below on how ideas from culturally sustaining pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014) can be used to increase the view of what outcomes are possible. Motivation theory, specifically control-value theory, illustrates the ways we can enhance students’ desire to learn. Pedagogical theories support the idea that more interactive modes of engagement enhance learning over more passive behaviors. Therefore, ideas like the ICAP framework (see ICAP Framework section) are useful to instructors when considering how to implement participatory science approaches for maximum impact. Finally, opportunity hoarding is a synthetic theory that simultaneously helps motivate the inclusion of participatory science in the postsecondary STEM classroom as well as explain the synergistic nature of culturally sustaining pedagogy, motivation theory, and pedagogical theory.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Participatory science lends itself well to inclusive science teaching, and culturally sustaining pedagogy supports its use. Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is the updated version of culturally relevant pedagogy in which an understanding of local culture informs teaching practices that explicitly engage students in questions of equity and justice (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy focuses on an instructor's role in three domains: a student's academic success, a student's cultural competence (the ability to value one's own culture in addition to gaining knowledge of at least one other culture), and the development of a student's sociopolitical consciousness (the ability to identify, analyze, and solve real-world problems; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014). These same aspects are represented in culturally sustaining pedagogy, but it also includes the idea that our pedagogies must continually evolve to address the complexities of social inequalities and better meet the needs of students (Ladson-Billings, 2014). This update encourages students to critically consider current policies and practices that directly impact them and requires instructors to recognize that multiple identities and cultures are interacting at once (Paris, 2012; Paris and Alim, 2014).

Through intentional engagement with participatory science, a student can learn about their own cultural values as well as the values of other people (the community), explore real-world disparities, and critique the basis of privilege and advantage. This pedagogy helps students reflect on the experiences of people from different backgrounds and use science to identify and potentially solve problems. Participatory approaches that include a social justice perspective provide students with opportunities to increase cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness while identifying and proposing solutions for real-world problems.

Culturally sustaining pedagogy can also be useful in connecting participatory approaches with actively democratizing science. This pedagogical framework grounds participatory science in a larger purpose beyond the classroom, in what Imad and colleagues (2023) hail as the purpose of education: “to understand and help address local and global problems to better society and the world.” Culturally sustaining pedagogy helps center students as agents of change toward social good and facilitates the development of students’ awareness of sociopolitical issues.

Control-Value Theory. Theories of motivation help explain why students behave the way they do and how this behavior impacts learning (Schunk et al., 2010). Control-value theory of motivation integrates one's appraisals of the probability of success, emotions, engagement, and ultimately success (Pekrun, 1992; Pekrun and Perry, 2014). Namely, students appraise their control (or lack of control) over their success in a learning environment and the value their success in that environment does or does not provide. Students’ emotional response to this control and this value is an antecedent to their engagement and success.

Although multiple motivational theories may be relevant to participatory science, we focus on control-value theory because participatory science approaches can be particularly effective at increasing students’ sense of control over their success and increasing the value students assign to tasks (Choi et al., 2025). Encouraging the view that everyone can contribute to science helps debunk the idea that science is only for the academically elite and builds student self-efficacy by showing diverse examples of people doing science. Allowing students some autonomy in their work, by providing a choice of projects to which they can contribute data or allowing them to design hypotheses related to a particular project, can also enhance a student's sense of control. Participatory science approaches may also increase the value that students place upon their work, as students may value having their data or findings be seen and potentially used by people outside of their class (Auchincloss et al., 2014; Corwin et al., 2015). The “real world” relevance of this work is often abundantly clear to students based on the topics of participatory science projects (e.g., water quality metrics, number of species occurring in an area). This relevance can be highlighted by having students read information about a participatory science project (e.g., on their website) or meeting local individuals involved in the design or implementation of a project.

Control-value theory asserts that once students feel an enhanced sense of control and place increased value on a task, their engagement and success improve (Choi et al., 2025). Therefore, participatory science approaches may be particularly effective at increasing student motivation and performance.

ICAP Framework. The ICAP framework defines cognitive engagement based on student behaviors that can be described as one of four modes: Interactive (I), Constructive (C), Active (A), and Passive (P) (Chi and Wylie, 2014). Passive engagement occurs when students are receiving information without overtly doing anything else related to learning, while active engagement occurs if a student is involved in an overt action or physical manipulation with instructional materials that requires focused attention. Constructive behaviors generate new ideas or products beyond what was provided through activities such as drawing a concept map, paraphrasing material, comparing and contrasting ideas, and reflecting and monitoring one's learning. Finally, interactive behaviors require at least two learners who are both undertaking constructive behaviors together. For example, students working together to generate new ideas that neither individual knew alone would be an interactive engagement (Chi and Wylie, 2014). As students move from passive to active to constructive to interactive engagement, their learning has been hypothesized to increase. Support exists for this hypothesis (Menekse et al., 2013; Freeman et al., 2014; Chi et al., 2018), though some authors question the strength of this evidence (Thurn et al., 2023).

We use the ICAP framework to highlight the variety of ways that participatory science approaches can be implemented in a post-secondary class. Students could be asked to generate new data (constructive behavior) or to work in teams on authentic research experiences (interactive behaviors). As an instructor evaluates how they want to implement these approaches in their undergraduate class, they can determine if it is possible to include more interactive tasks. For example, instead of solely having students collect data and submit it to an online database, one could have students form hypotheses and test them using data from a database. Alternatively, students could partner with community members or organizations to generate new knowledge that meets a community need (e.g., collect water quality data on streams thought to be impacted by new construction to inform community requests for pollution mitigation efforts; Carrera et al., 2019; Roy and Edwards, 2019).

Opportunity Hoarding. Finally, opportunity hoarding is a framework that simultaneously helps motivate the use of participatory science in the classroom and helps explain the synergistic combination of culturally sustaining pedagogy and motivational and pedagogical theories as a mechanism for the democratization of science. Opportunity hoarding posits that hoarding of high-status opportunities occurs within traditional science learning spaces as well as within science more broadly. This hoarding results in “in-group” and “out-group” dynamics (Tilley, 1998, 2000; Burley, 2002) wherein the “in-group” has access to these high-status opportunities and resources and the “out-group” does not. This hoarding of opportunities can be conscious or unconscious, and in STEM and STEM classrooms is often a result of systemic oppression. The product of opportunity hoarding is that the “out-group” does not have access to resources and opportunities, thus members of the “out-group” are excluded from the advantages of engaging in the opportunity.

Opportunity hoarding is helpful to understand how social stratification plays out in STEM classrooms and STEM broadly. The idea of in-groups and out-groups manifests itself in classroom settings through pernicious comparisons that students make (e.g., you have the fancy new personal tech, I do not; Tatapudy et al., 2025), through status evaluations within classrooms (Grunspan et al., 2016), and through the supremacy of higher education STEM in which groups of people have been systematically excluded from STEM majors (Asai, 2020). In science more broadly, who is “allowed” to be a scientist is also often restricted to people with an advanced degree, and people practicing, publishing, or teaching science. Participatory science breaks down some of these divisions by reducing the hoarding of scientific participation and more intentionally including more people in science.

We propose that the inclusion of participatory science in the classroom disrupts the opportunity hoarding that occurs when who can “do science” is limited to the ivory tower and professional scientists. Instead, participatory science engages the public in the scientific endeavor, making the high-status opportunity of “doing science” available to everyone. These benefits are amplified when participatory science is integrated into postsecondary STEM classes because students are taught that everyone can do science. In addition, incorporating participatory science into classes helps diversify project participants. While most volunteer participants have historically been white, middle-class men, post-secondary students at many institutions bring much wider representations of gender, race, and socioeconomic background. Introducing participatory science to students opens the door to broader participation as the students share their experiences with their communities and potentially continue to embrace the vision of empowering the public to use science to solve problems of interest in their local communities even after the class ends.

Furthermore, when instructors strategically plan their curriculum based upon a strong theoretical foundation, the learning outcomes, ways to motivate students, and methods of instruction synergize so that opportunities are not hoarded and all groups - in-groups and out-groups - have access to high-status opportunities. In this way, we propose that the values of integrating participatory science in STEM classes are due to the synergistic combination of culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, interactive pedagogy, and disrupting opportunity hoarding.

Multidimensional Model to Maximize Learning Goals for Participatory Science

These theoretical frameworks support expanding the view of what students can learn through participatory science approaches, why these approaches may enhance student motivation to learn, and how to promote interactive and equity-focused student behaviors. Emerging from these theories, we propose a new model for how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals. While many ideas have been discussed in the literature for enhancing student learning, no models have proposed specific ways in which undergraduate student learning can be enhanced through participatory sciences. We use social justice, science agency, and breadth of interaction as three dimensions (Figure 1) to operationalize the four learning theories.

FIGURE 1.

The three dimensions integrate theories of inclusive science, motivation, and pedagogy with participatory science in the postsecondary STEM classroom.

We chose to limit ourselves to three dimensions because operating in three-dimensional space is easier for the human brain than including more dimensions. We also knew there were three dimensions pulling on what distinguishes participatory science and what students find motivating: students’ desire to make the world a better place, substantive science tasks, and interacting with a broader community. Our final depiction of the three dimensions, operationalized as continuums of the incorporation of participatory science in the postsecondary classroom, is shown in Figure 1.

Each dimension is a continuum of practice, and we propose the model as a tool for instructors who seek to incorporate participatory science in their practice. For example, a subsequent step on a scale of science agency can get an instructor closer to an aspirational goal. The three dimensions can operate independently, but they can also work together. Instructors can choose to focus on a single aspect at a time or multiple. More specifically, moving in a particular direction on one axis does not automatically move instruction in a particular direction on another axis. For instance, it is possible to move instruction higher on the science agency dimension without changing one's position on the social justice or breadth of interaction dimensions. However, in some cases, there may be single instructional changes that move along multiple axes. For example, moving to incorporate more voices in the solutions to scientific issues (i.e., moving up the breadth of interaction axis) may simultaneously move up the social justice axis if these increased interactions expose additional inequities or move the effort toward solving inequities. Nonetheless, we present the axes as independent from each other intentionally to make the task of achieving aspirational goals more tenable. Our hope is for instructors to use the model for reflection, to visualize possible ways to incorporate additional learning outcomes, for increased intentionality, and to help inform aspects of backwards course design. We are not advocating that instructors need to move in a specific direction on one or more dimensions.

Description of Axes

Social Justice. Although social justice has many definitions, we are using the term primarily to refer to the position that the oppression of marginalized groups and resulting disparities must be abolished, with an emphasis on preserving (creating) democracy (Murrell Jr., 2006; Sabbagh and Schmitt, 2016; Bowser and Cid, 2021). Therefore, this axis describes the ways in which instructors may include issues of distributive social justice in their teaching. Points low on this axis describe the traditional mode of teaching science without any discussion or consideration of issues related to social justice. An instructor will begin to move up this axis if they discuss inequities in their teaching. For example, they could describe how environmental hazards (exposure to air pollution, etc.) have been documented to be higher in areas with marginalized populations, while exposure to environmental benefits (higher levels of tree cover, etc.) has been documented to be higher in areas with largely majority populations with greater economic resources (Christine and Thinyane, 2021; Herzog and Lepenies, 2022). Or instructors could discuss inequities in how science data have traditionally been collected, with less emphasis (or no emphasis) on data from marginalized populations (e.g., medical trials on largely white populations, water quality sampling concentrated near higher-income areas). If an instructor wanted to continue to move up the social justice axis, they could have students use data to discover or explore these inequities rather than just hear about them. For example, students could overlay mapping data showing areas of high air pollution with census mapping data of the demographics (race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class) of the populations living in those areas (Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2024). Instructors high on this axis will incorporate opportunities for students to share the patterns and information they discovered with relevant parties (impacted communities, policymakers, etc.) and to advocate for change. Instructors could also emphasize personal action to disrupt some of the inequities. Even if permanent solutions take systemic changes, personal action can be influential and may instill in students a lifetime commitment to action.

Social justice is a component that has the greatest potential for achieving goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion. The four levels we identified along this axis range from a lack of acknowledgement of historical and contemporary disparities to classes that engage students in discussions of inequities, to classes that utilize data to discover and explore inequities, to classes that utilize participatory science approaches to facilitate and enact change. In the top level, students have the power to effect change by being invested in who the audience of their report should be and what actions need to be enacted to effect significant change.

The integration of social justice with participatory science has enormous potential. For example, when Andrew Maynard, Arizona State, asked “Can citizen science empower disenfranchised communities?” his answer discussed the Flint Water Study, which looked at lead levels in tap water in Flint, Michigan (<https://theconversation.com/can-citizen-science-empower-disenfranchised-communities-53625>). Such projects share an idea:

“partnering members of a community with experts to study the questions they want answered. … science that empowers citizens to deal with issues that directly concern them. It's an approach that enables communities – regardless of their location, background, culture or literacy levels – to take the lead in research that's directly relevant to them. At its core, this form of citizen-led science recognizes and validates the ability of citizens to ‘own’ the scientific method – to formulate questions and do research that directly benefits them and their communities. And it underlines how science can empower the disempowered and disenfranchised.”

The Flint Water Study is a strong example of how public participation in science helped identify a problem, bring a community together, and ultimately lead to change (Peplow, 2018; Carrera et al., 2019; Pauli, 2020).

Similarly, several other projects align with the social justice axis in that they explicitly improved the human condition by addressing a social disparity. For example, the Eterna RNA game (https://eternagame.org/) used crowdsourcing to solicit RNA constructs that could then be examined to predict rates of RNA degradation. These data were critical in allowing the COVID-19 RNA vaccine to switch from needing to be stored in −80°C freezers to being thermostable, thereby facilitating worldwide distribution of this life-saving vaccine using standard refrigeration (Wellington-Oguri et al., 2021; Andreasson et al., 2022; Wayment-Steele et al., 2022; Ye et al., 2023). As another example, participants of FoldIt! (a participatory science project that gamifies protein folding; https://fold.it/) helped design a successful new drug to treat HIV (S. Cooper et al., 2010; Khatib et al., 2011; Farley, 2013a), and FoldIt! has been used in undergraduate classes to determine crystal structures, illustrate protein folding, and teach biochemistry (Farley, 2013b; Horowitz et al., 2016; Achterman, 2019; Dsilva et al., 2019). Finally, crowdsourced image analysis has facilitated better diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for a variety of diseases (Good and Su, 2011; Luengo-Oroz et al., 2012; Good et al., 2014; Tsueng et al., 2016; Donald et al., 2017).

There are numerous possibilities for instructors to adopt, adapt, implement, and develop participatory science projects that will engage much broader participation in scientific research and have an impact on issues that matter to students. For example, students could be given the results from the Flint water testing study and asked to interpret them. Alternatively, students could be asked to test water in their local area through a different national water testing project (e.g., see Crowd the Tap, FieldScope, or WaterInsights on Scistarter.org). The Eterna RNA game or FoldIt puzzles can be used with students to teach them about biochemistry, while also contributing information to scientists that contributes to research on RNA, proteins, and medical innovations (see resources for educators at https://eternagame.org/edu or https://fold.it/forum/discussion/for-educators) (Miller et al., 2020). These platforms highlight how students (in fact, everyone) can contribute valuable scientific information, collaborate with scientists, and even receive credit for their work while advancing medical research.

Science Agency. The word “agency” has been defined in many different ways in science education research (Arnold and Clarke, 2014). We use science agency to mean a student's capacity to conduct aspects of the process of science. Therefore, this axis describes the extent to which an instructor facilitates those opportunities. Points low on this axis represent learning tasks in which students use an existing protocol to collect data (e.g., through a cookbook lab or participatory science data collection). Somewhat higher expectations for science agency correspond to activities that require students to analyze or interpret data. Instructors can move further up the axis by involving students in science inquiry. Inquiry methods allow students to pose problems, study the natural world, and develop scientific arguments based on evidence. For example, students can form their own hypotheses in a lab course, collect data, and draw conclusions. Finally, instruction that is high on this axis involves students in research, such as through course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). Research involves students in science practices, features findings that are novel, has relevance that extends beyond the course, involves collaboration, and includes inherent iteration (Auchincloss et al., 2014).

We acknowledge, however, that it is possible for inquiry to require students to conduct more sophisticated tasks (e.g., designing experiments and protocols) than may be necessary in some research (e.g., executing existing protocols). The distinction we are making centers on the amount of agency required for students to complete the tasks. To achieve the highest levels of science agency, students need to be actively engaged in complex tasks such as defining what problem should be addressed, what data should be collected, how the data should be analyzed, and how the data should be interpreted and disseminated. In other words, students need to be involved in many stages of a scientific research project that personally matters to them, rather than doing cookbook labs with reports that have no significance outside the classroom.

This second axis has much in common with the current CURE movement (Krim et al., 2019; Buchanan and Fisher, 2022). It is important to ensure that students are actually engaging in essential discovery aspects of scientific research (Corwin et al., 2018). Too often, access to doing research as an undergraduate has been limited primarily to rising seniors with high grade point averages at prestigious research universities or private colleges. Furthermore, because of decreased federal funding for research, many research projects serve corporate rather than societal needs (Bencze and Carter, 2011). However, numerous opportunities exist for engagement in a participatory science project where the data and findings will be of interest to a broader scientific community.

Breadth of Interaction and Teamwork. The breadth of the interaction axis shows a continuum in which students may interact with others through participatory science. The low end of the spectrum includes class projects/learning that students complete individually, with no need to work together or with others. Instruction in which students work together in teams within their class is slightly higher on this axis. Although many students dread “group work”, teaching students strategies for effective teamwork can produce gains in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for more positive collaborations (National Research Council (U.S.), 2015; Freeland et al., 2025). These interactions also allow students to reap the benefits of social learning by observing others. Instructors can move higher on this axis by having students participate in teams that include individuals from other disciplines or parts of the university (i.e., interdisciplinary teams). For example, students from an ecology course could partner with students from a hydrology course to evaluate the water quality of a local stream. Finally, instruction that is high on this axis embeds students with community members from outside the university on a project of interest to the community (i.e., university-community collaborations). For example, a service-learning course may have students work on a project with a community organization for a semester.

This breadth of interaction dimension argues that students need to be able to work with others, even those from different disciplines or backgrounds, to solve problems. University-community collaborations, in which students work with people from the community outside of the university, reinforce the idea that students must act responsibly as citizens in a participatory democracy. This research tries to accentuate the importance of the community's needs rather than bringing solutions in search of problems. It also emphasizes the need to value the diverse life experiences and personal assets that others bring to confronting complex, real-world problems and designing solutions that will be broadly accepted by the relevant communities.

How Instructors can use this Multidimensional Model. Together, these three axes (Figure 1) form a multidimensional space. We propose this model as a tool for reflection for instructors. As instructors engage in course design or reform, we hope they will use this tool to reflect on their practice and consider the continued or enhanced integration of participatory science into their classes. For example, instructors could ask themselves: How much agency should students be given with a science project? How much interaction should students have with the community? And in what ways could social justice be leveraged as a way to increase the relevance of scientific discovery?

Instructors can plan where in this multidimensional space they aspire to be. For example, Instructor A may wish for their nonmajors biology course to explore inequities in the distribution of pollution sources across neighborhoods of differing incomes (medium-high on the social justice axis), interpret data (medium-low on the science agency axis), and work alone as a homework assignment (low on the breadth of interaction axis). In contrast, Instructor B's goal may be for his upper-level conservation biology course to work to facilitate change (high on the social justice axis) while doing research (high on the science agency axis) in teams that include community members (high on the breadth of interaction axis). It is not necessary for the position along any axis to be correlated with the course level. For example, Instructor C may teach an upper-level entomology course in which her students do not have any discussion of social justice issues (low on the social justice axis), they collect data on insect abundances and distributions that they contribute to the Caterpillars Count! citizen science project (caterpillarscount.unc.edu), but do not ask hypotheses or make scientific arguments (low on the science agency axis), and they work in pairs (medium-low on the breadth of interaction axis). All of these approaches are valid and appropriate and will vary depending on the learning goals of a particular course. The location of these three instructors’ classes in multidimensional space is shown in Figure 2.

FIGURE 2.

Three examples of participatory science implementation by hypothetical instructors (A, B, and C). Instructor A may teach a nonmajors biology course in which students work individually to explore inequities in the distribution of pollution sources across neighborhoods of differing incomes and interpret data. Instructor B's upper-level conservation biology course may work to facilitate change through research conducted in teams that include community members. Finally, Instructor C may teach an upper-level entomology course in which her students do not have any discussion of social justice issues or test hypotheses or make scientific arguments, but they work in pairs to collect data on insect abundances and distributions that they contribute to a citizen science project.

We can also map examples from the published literature of undergraduate classes that have implemented participatory science projects onto different parts of the three-dimensional space in Figure 2. Vitone et al. (2016) had students complete the School of Ants project or Backyard Bark Beetles project, in which students collected arthropods using a standardized protocol. They then sent their collected specimens to scientists who identified them and added their collection sites to a map of the species’ known range. This example does not have any discussion of issues related to social justice, requires students to collect data from an existing protocol, and has students work independently. Therefore, this use of participatory science would be fairly low on all three axes. Being low on all three axes does not imply that this activity was not worthwhile. In fact, the authors detected positive shifts in students’ attitudes toward science from this project (Vitone et al., 2016).

Paradise and Bartkovich (2021) had students collect, photograph, identify insects, and upload their results to an online database called BugGuide. In addition, they used data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to investigate geographic distribution changes of species over time. In this example, there is no indication that social justice topics were included, so it would map low on that axis. Since students went beyond collecting data, though, to asking questions and testing hypotheses, it would score more in the middle of the science agency axis. Students completed some aspects of the assignment in groups with their classmates, which would map less than halfway up the breadth of the interaction axis.

Finally, Malotky et al. (2020) had students in a CURE about health disparities in underserved communities. The research projects varied each semester but included topics such as the incidence of hypertension, the impact of book clubs on Alzheimer's health literacy, and the health concerns and English language skills in a local refugee community. The community helped co-create some aspects of the project each semester, and the students reported their results back to relevant community groups. This implementation of participatory science created opportunities for students to discover and explore inequities in health care, mapping in the middle of the social justice axis. Since the students were completing novel research with iteration in a CURE setting, this maps high on the science agency axis. The students interacted with classmates, students from a different university nearby, and even community members during this project, positioning this implementation high on the breadth of interaction axis.

There are many ways that instructors can integrate participatory science into their classrooms, and we propose that Figure 1 can be used as a tool for considering one's objectives to help determine which participatory science project and what type of project implementation may be most likely to meet those objectives. Some participatory science projects are more easily aligned with certain objectives than others. For example, biodiversity tracking projects (like iNaturalist) have obvious classroom implementation possibilities along different parts of the science agency and possibly the breadth of interaction axes but less obvious options for the social justice axis. In most cases, however, the choice of project determines less about an instructor's placement on the multidimensional model than how they choose to incorporate the project into their course. Using NASA's GLOBE Observer project in class could fall very low on all three dimensions if students use it in the absence of any discussion of resource disparities, only to collect data using the established protocol, as a solo assignment completed by each student individually. In contrast, that same project could be much higher on each dimension if students developed hypotheses and devised methods to explore how land cover varied with median income levels, in cooperation with a local organization wishing to determine where green spaces are needed to ensure access by individuals of all income levels. Since the dimensions are independent, it is also possible to be low on one axis and high on others, in any combination. The choice of project and the way in which it is implemented in a course should reflect the instructor's intentional planning for the part of the multidimensional space in Figure 2 that they want students to reach.

Connecting the Multidimensional Model with Theory. The theoretical frameworks featured above (culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, the ICAP framework, and opportunity hoarding) support this multidimensional model (Figures 1 and 2). Together, these theories illustrate an expansion of what can be taught using participatory science approaches, why students may be motivated to learn, and how these approaches can be implemented in class. Specifically, culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, and the ICAP framework can synergize to disrupt opportunity hoarding and can be operationalized by our three-dimensional model (Figure 3). These theories are not an exhaustive list of educational theories that position participatory science as a pedagogical tool that instructors can use to meet their goals (e.g., engage students, expose students to authentic research, and illustrate the relevance of science), and each theory does not map solely to one axis. Although the social justice axis seems to be an obvious outcome of culturally sustaining pedagogy, the science agency axis is an outcome of control-value theory, and the level of interaction axis is an outcome of ICAP, the relationship between these four theories and the three axes is more complex. We discuss below some of the various ways the model relates to each of the theories. We seek to synthesize these theories to help practitioners understand why participatory science might be effective as an instructional method and how we can use the multidimensional model as a tool to operationalize these theories through the use of participatory science approaches in the post-secondary classroom.

FIGURE 3.

Depiction of the connection between the four theories described and the multidimensional model for how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals.

Connecting the Model to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. A discussion of issues that are relevant to student lives but do not acknowledge disparities or inequities would be low on the social justice axis. If an instructor wanted to make a modest step into social justice outcomes, they could use culturally sustaining pedagogy to discuss issues such as health disparities or environmental justice that explore the relevant biological issues but also acknowledge the cultural influences and impacts of these issues. Moving more deeply into social justice outcomes, instructors could assign students to explore patterns in data that reveal inequities and have students reflect on their own position, as well as the position of other relevant parties, relative to these inequities. For example, students could examine census data (on population demographics) and overlay it with information on sources of pollution in the area.

In addition, instructors could use culturally sustaining pedagogy to strive for both social justice outcomes and a high breadth of interaction, in which students partner with existing organizations involved in the topic of interest and participate in efforts to further community priorities to reduce disparities. These types of activities often require long-term partnerships between the instructor and community organization to allow the trust necessary for productive work. It also requires students to become informed about the values and culture of the community partners so they can bring the mindset and humility necessary to have a partnership that is beneficial to the community partner. Spelman College has one such example, in which local communities and students partnered in water quality monitoring efforts to track pollution and monitor conditions in an urban, impaired stream (Vance-Chalcraft and Jelks, 2023). Students and community members collected data, communicated their results, and developed strategies to advance environmental justice goals. Through this process, students gained a deeper understanding of the value the community members placed on this stream and its cultural significance to them while gaining practical experience identifying potential solutions for a real-world problem. Such experiences can help students begin to see themselves as agents of change (Vance-Chalcraft et al., 2024).

Finally, culturally sustaining pedagogy intersects with the science agency axis by promoting students as the creators of knowledge. As the agency (as we have proposed it) increases, so too does a student's leadership over project priorities. In this way, students can explore their own cultural values as well as the values of other people, particularly if the breadth of interaction is similarly maximized. Moreover, if students are given the opportunity to interact with community members, they can increase their cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness.

Connecting the Model to Control-Value Theory. Control-value theory maps into the three-dimensional space proposed in Figure 2 to help understand students’ motivation when engaged in participatory science. For example, some students may place the highest value on tasks and success when the project is situated in the three-dimensional space, with the highest value on the social justice, breadth of interaction, and scientific agency axes. Doing scientific research with people engaged across contexts can make the utility of science to achieve social change more concrete.

Control-value theory has relevance to the Science Agency axis in Figure 1. This theory indicates that the more people identify with an activity's value, the more effective their performance will be and the greater well-being they will experience. Even the lowest point on the Science Agency axis, collecting data from an existing protocol, if done as part of a participatory science project, allows students to see the relevance of their activities to the broader scientific community more than an assignment in which only their instructor will see their data. However, moving higher along the axis generally involves a deeper exploration of a topic, which is often accompanied by students placing a higher value on their work. For example, participation in course-based undergraduate research is often reported to produce higher levels of motivation, promote project ownership by students, and inspire students to talk about their research with friends and family members (Hanauer et al., 2012; Olimpo et al., 2016; Hanauer et al., 2017; Corwin et al., 2018; Sorensen et al., 2018; Marley et al., 2022). Thus, both value and relatedness can be predicted to increase with science agency. In addition, motivation is enhanced as the degree of choice and control that people feel they have increases. Research from course-based undergraduate research experiences suggests significant roles of autonomy in outcome achievement (Gin et al., 2018). Participatory science programs can allow for autonomy with freedom of schedule, flexibility of choice, or through co-creation. Participatory science approaches can excite many positive emotions, such as curiosity, excitement, and a sense of purpose. When coupled with a clear sense of agency and control as well as a clearly articulated value of the project (e.g., social justice, habitat restoration for threatened species, etc.), a student is more likely to engage and work toward their success and the success of the project.

Control-value theory underlies both the social justice and the breadth of interaction axes, as well. These relationships may be complex and dependent on student and course context. For example, discovering inequities may decrease a student's sense of control (if they had never contemplated such things before) or may increase it (if it helps put words and evidence behind something they have experienced). If the work causes students to reflect deeply about inequities and their own positionality, it may increase the value this activity has for them.

These ideas may also highlight implications of the model for the underlying theory. Although control-value theory seems to indicate that the value of the work and control over the work are positively correlated, we can envision examples where they are not. For example, if students work with community members, it may decrease their sense of control but increase the value they place upon the work.

In other words, projects that are high on the social justice axis or that involve many community members working toward the same goal could embody why success is valuable (ameliorating an inequity). Similarly, while collaborations may decrease individual autonomy, effective groupwork can make control over group success more tangible. The nuanced interplay between control and value, as well as the emotions that are elicited during participatory science are worth investigating empirically.

Connecting the Model to the ICAP Framework. ICAP theory suggests designing lesson plans from the perspective of students, based on what they are asked to do and produce when interacting with instruction. ICAP relates to the Social Justice axis because the more a project includes social justice goals, the more likely students are to be constructing new knowledge. Teaching about inequities conveys information that is already known, whereas having students look for patterns of inequities or working with others to facilitate change requires students to use problem-solving and critical thinking skills to detect unique patterns or construct processes of their own.

Similarly, tasks higher on the Science Agency axis are more likely to require the construction of new knowledge. Research involves unknown results with students producing novel findings. Tasks higher on the Science Agency axis are also more likely to be interactive, as inquiry and research are generally conducted with others, while data collection or interpretation tasks may not be.

The ICAP framework also underlies the Breadth of Interaction axis, as interactive behaviors are more likely to be represented as you move across the axis. For example, a lesson in which students work alone on a project is less interactive than one in which students work with others in their class or from another discipline or community. Since the interactive engagement category is thought to produce deeper learning, the framework provides instructors with ideas to change to strategies that may yield greater learning outcomes (Chi and Boucher, 2023).

Connecting the Model to Opportunity Hoarding. We use opportunity hoarding as a way to synthesize many of these ideas. Participatory science in higher education classrooms, particularly that which maps into levels that maximize the three-dimensional space proposed (Figures 1 and 2), can similarly break down traditional barriers around in-group and out-group dynamics and demonstrate the disruption of the traditionally supremacist values in STEM (Imad, 2024). Participatory science contradicts opportunity hoarding by redefining who can participate in science (a high-status opportunity). The “in-group” (scientists) partner with the “out-group” non-scientists to develop projects, engage in data collection, and seek answers to relevant questions.

Participatory science provides students the opportunity to discuss, discover, or work to change inequities in power or resources. Participatory science can also increase interactions between students and the community, helping each population better access resources and opportunities available through science. And participatory science challenges students to have more agency and produce novel findings. Therefore, it is possible for these approaches to make students aware of the systemic opportunity hoarding that occurs in STEM and highlight ways to draw the larger public into the process of science.

Conclusions, Caveats, and Considerations for Implementation. We connect theory to practice to explain why incorporating participatory sciences in post-secondary STEM courses may produce learning gains. Specifically, we assert that the value of integrating participatory science in STEM classes is due to the synergistic combination of culturally sustaining pedagogy, control-value theory, interactive pedagogy, and disrupting opportunity hoarding. These theoretical frameworks support expanding the view of what students can learn through participatory science approaches, why these approaches may enhance student motivation to learn, and how to promote interactive and equity-focused student behaviors. To operationalize these learning theories, we propose using social justice, science agency, and breadth of interaction as a multidimensional model for how participatory sciences can be used in higher education to maximize instructional goals. The choice of a participatory science project and the way in which it is implemented in a course should reflect the instructor's intentional planning for the part of the multidimensional space in Figure 2 that they want students to reach.

There are a few important caveats associated with our operationalized dimensions: science agency, breadth of interaction with the community, and social justice. Specifically, we envision this model (Figures 1 and 2) as useful for instructors who seek to incorporate participatory science into their postsecondary STEM classrooms. We consider these axes aspirational and hopefully inspirational; thus, we suggest that instructors use this as a tool for reflection and growth rather than a tool for judgment, comparison, or admonishment. For example, as an instructor, where are you located in this multidimensional space? Where do you want to be located?

Our goal is to inspire reflection and promote intentionality. We do not intend to suggest that every instructor in every class should be “at the high end of the extremes” of all three of the axes, nor do we intend to shame instructors who choose not to move up on these continuums. There are many reasons to be in different locations on each continuum. Specifically, our intention is for this model to help instructors identify areas in which they could change their practice to increase the efficacy of incorporating participatory science in their postsecondary STEM classrooms. Namely, if instructors wanted to be in a different area of the three-dimensional space, what steps could they take? We hope our model will help facilitate this change.