INSPIRE: Authentic and student-centred activities within citizen humanities targeting high school students

This theory paper proposes Involving Students in Participatory Research in Education (INSPIRE), a pedagogical framework for curriculum-based citizen science (CS) activities within citizen humanities at high schools. From an instructional perspective, this framework can support teachers, researchers and CS educators in developing an authentic, student-centred learning environment for citizen humanities activities at the high school level. INSPIRE is based on two Danish research projects (Our History and Climate Futures Fiction) within citizen humanities. These projects involved Danish high school students who, as part of their formal learning, adopted the role of citizen scientists to generate data and analyse and share their findings. The pedagogical framework is built upon a conjecture map that identified the design features (materials & resources, authentic and student-centred CS activities, and participation & practices) within the two cases. Moreover, we compare the design features of CS activities within humanities and natural science.