Teachers’ experiences and views on integrating citizen science apps into school-based biological education

Abstract

This study explores teachers' experiences and perspectives on integrating citizen science (CS) applications into biology and environmental education in schools, aiming to understand their motives, strategies, and challenges, as well as the extent to which they incorporate citizen science into their teaching.. Ten participants, school teachers with varying teaching experience across different geographic regions, were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Inductive content analysis was employed for data analysis.The findings reveal that teachers commonly use CS applications as standalone tools, seeing them as beneficial for teaching and student learning. They prefer using these applications outside regular lessons to avoid curriculum constraints and challenges associated with phone use in schools. Surprisingly, even teachers actively engaged in CS activities themselves rarely involve students, possibly due to time constraints, lack of understanding of integration methods, or simply overlooking the opportunity.