Publications and Communications

The relationship between research and action has marked the working practice of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra since its inception. The centre is distinguished by a strong component of participatory and collaborative research - research on, in and with society. This critical and reflective dialogue has fostered and maintained various links internally, between its researchers, and with external people, communities and organisations. It is from this dynamic of interdisciplinary research committed to society that a new field of work has been developed specifically dedicated to promoting this way of producing knowledge. The concept of engaged citizen social science arises in this context, seeking to bring together two areas of work: citizen social science and the ecology of knowledge. This concept arises from reflection on the matrix of the work carried out at CES, based on the concepts of Ecology of Knowledge and Citizen Social Science (Campos, Monteiro, Carvalho, 2021).

The Citizen Science and Education Working Group - CC.Edu - was established to create a working space that consolidates existing knowledge on the development of citizen social science projects and enables them to be expanded to a more involved dimension, in close connection with school communities. Its activities include the design, implementation and evaluation of a citizen science project in secondary education, in partnership with the Coimbra Centre School Cluster.
In this communication we will present the process and the results obtained during the first two years of the project from the perspectives of academia (research team responsible for the scientific component) and citizens (teaching staff and students). We will focus the discussion on the lessons learnt and how these contribute to structuring a model for the sustained use of an engaged citizen social science methodology in educational contexts.