The Community's Contribution to Science Learning: Making It Count

Abstract

Underpinning the title of this address are two assumptions. The first is that the community should contribute to science learning. To justify this assumption, I describe a little of what we know about the outcomes of learning science. The second assumption is that the potential community contribution needs some assistance to ‘make it count’. To explain this, I outline community-based opportunities for learning science, meld this with what we know about learning outside of school, and then use case studies to illustrate how we can make it count.