Julia Lorke

This Correspondence summarizes the session “From Petri Dish to Planet Earth: Microbiology by All” at FEMS MICRO Milan 2025 highlighting the urgent need for microbial literacy and societal engagement with microbiology. Chaired by Rup Lal and Juan-Luis Ramos, the session convened scientists, educators, and communicators to discuss strategies for promoting microbiology among communities, policymakers, and students. Central contributions focused on the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative (IMiLI), emphasizing global collaboration, intergenerational dialogue, and community-centered educational tools. Discussions showcased practical examples of microbial applications for sustainability and public engagement. The session conclusions, presented by Princy Hira, reaffirmed IMiLI’s mission to expand microbial literacy across borders and generations, recognizing educators as key drivers and science communicators as essential outreach ambassadors

Citizen science (CS) can foster transformative impact for science, citizen empowerment and socio-political processes. To unleash this impact, a clearer understanding of its current status and challenges for its development is needed. Using quantitative indicators developed in a collaborative stakeholder process, our study provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of CS in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Our online survey with 340 responses focused on CS impact through (1) scientific practices, (2) participant learning and empowerment, and (3) socio-political processes. With regard to scientific impact, we found that data quality control is an established component of CS practice, while publication of CS data and results has not yet been achieved by all project coordinators (55%). Key benefits for citizen scientists were the experience of collective impact (“making a difference together with others”) as well as gaining new knowledge. For the citizen scientists’ learning outcomes, different forms of social learning, such as systematic feedback or personal mentoring, were essential. While the majority of respondents attributed an important value to CS for decision-making, only few were confident that CS data were indeed utilized as evidence by decision-makers. Based on these results, we recommend (1) that project coordinators and researchers strengthen scientific impact by fostering data management and publications, (2) that project coordinators and citizen scientists enhance participant impact by promoting social learning opportunities and (3) that project initiators and CS networks foster socio-political impact through early engagement with decision-makers and alignment with ongoing policy processes. In this way, CS can evolve its transformative impact.

: Citizen science offers teachers a way to bring authentic scientific research into their classrooms by providing both teachers and their students with opportunities to contribute to authentic research. The potential of citizen science for science education has already been highlighted in various fields and by various stakeholders. More and more studies underpin this potential by providing evidence for the learning outcomes achieved through participation in citizen science projects. In formal education settings, teachers are the gatekeepers for teaching innovations and, hence, the ones who decide whether to engage students in citizen science. However, the expertise of teachers who have already participated in citizen science with their students has not been studied on a broad international level. Therefore, to investigate their experience and learn from their expertise, this study employed a concurrent triangulation design and invited teachers to participate in a survey (N = 56) and an interview (N = 11), independent of their country of residence, their school type, and their teaching subject. The results provide insights into teachers’ motivation, the engagement techniques and types of activities they used, the challenges they faced, and their recommendations for implementing citizen science in formal education settings. The present findings have important implications for the design of professional development programmes and support networks for teachers in citizen science.

We investigated youth participation in three Community and Citizen Science (CCS) programs led by natural history museums in out-of-school settings. Using second generation Activity Theory, we looked at repeated participation over time, collecting and then qualitatively analyzing ethnographic fieldnote observations on focal youth participation and components of the activity systems. We found each program provided multiple and unique access points for youth to participate in environmental science. Further, when facilitators emphasized the scientific goals of the programs clearly and repeatedly, youth participation in the scientific processes of the CCS programs deepened. Access to scientific tools, facilitation in using them, and repeatedly applying them in authentic research, enabled youth to participate in different aspects of CCS, from exploring to submitting biological data. Repeated participation in CCS activities provided the opportunities for youth to try the same type of participation multiple times (intensification), as well as provided the opportunity for youth to try different types of participation (diversification). Our findings suggest that repeated participation in authentic scientific research in CCS contexts fosters youth development of new roles and possible development of environmental science identities.

This is the final version of the White Paper Citizen Science Strategy 2030 for Germany, launched on 29/4/2022. English version see http://zenodo.org/record/7117771

Citizen science has grown as a form of public engagement in science. Middle-aged citizens who are already consuming scientific information should be a potential outreach group. Behaviour change research in citizen science participation among the demographic is lacking. A total of 47 museum visitors aged 40–60 years took part in qualitative questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis with the aid of theoretical domains framework and capability opportunity motivation-behaviour model revealed eight themes: (1) limited awareness of citizen science; (2) curiosity, competence and other significant characteristics and skills; (3) important beliefs about one’s capability; (4) importance of clear project purpose and impacts; (5) interest, enjoyment and incentives; (6) lasting impacts of family upbringing; (7) project details that make participation easy, better project promotion; and (8) the living environment, availability of free time and money. Addressing a maximum number of these factors with behaviour change techniques can improve the likelihood of citizen science participation.