Equals in Partnership? Perceptions of Expertise in Teacher-Scientist Partnerships Built around Citizen Science Projects (Short Paper)

Building upon the embedded potential for learning, growth, and empowerment, school-based citizen science engages K-12 students in authentic research activities. Such initiatives are commonly created as collaborations between scientists and schools, often with the support of educational specialists. The design and enactment of these multi-stakeholder environments call for the emergence of "trading zones", in which partners holding different worldviews and vocabularies negotiate difficulties as they work towards shared or congruent goals. One of the factors that greatly impacts the resolution of these "trading zones" is the perception of expertise. The question of who holds what expertise has implications regarding the distribution of roles and affordances within the partnership. This study examines how scientists and teachers that collaborate in school-based citizen science projects perceive their own and each other's expertise in domains outside of their usual professional realm.Findings show that teachers' scientific and interactional expertise was not highly valued by scientists. Scientists particularly considered teachers' scientific expertise to be low. Teachers, on the other hand, considered themselves to be competent contributors to research processes. Perceptions of scientists' pedagogical and interactional expertise was more complex, with both scientists and teachers showing mixed views of scientists' abilities in these domains.