ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the concept of citizen inquiry in educational settings. It presents the motivations of university students to participate in citizen inquiry and how these relate to level of task difficulty. The book examines the concept of citizen inquiry in the domains of social and applied sciences, specifically education and humanities. It proposes a new perspective on scientific practice through crowd-sourced science that involves citizens and scientists in shared explorations. The book describes a number of case studies of citizen inquiry and their pedagogical implications, specify the nature of citizen inquiry by drawing from concrete applications, identify learning contexts where citizen inquiry can most effectively be promoted and devise practical recommendations on how successful citizen inquiry applications can be developed. It explores the kinds of knowledge created in citizen science projects with the aim of helping the design of citizen humanities projects.