Weather Literacy Through Citizen Science: Evidence from a Primary School Pilot in Estonia

Citizen science has considerable potential not only for science communication, but also for supporting domain-specific knowledge development. Although it has increasingly entered formal education, its role in school practice could still be expanded. This study presents the national-scale citizen science project IgaILMaga, implemented as a pilot in Estonia with third-grade students from schools across the country.

Approximately 500 students participated in structured weather observations during a two-month period in autumn 2019. They observed local weather conditions and reported their observations through a mobile application developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The observations included phenomena such as the presence and intensity of precipitation, snow depth, fog, and visibility. The project achieved broad geographical coverage, involving schools from 13 of Estonia’s 15 counties and representing both urban and rural contexts. To support participation and understanding, specially designed instructional materials were integrated into classroom teaching.

To evaluate the educational impact of the activity, students completed identical pre- and post-tests based on a previously developed assessment tool for measuring meteorological knowledge in educational settings. The assessment included tasks related to temperature, wind, clouds, precipitation, and combined weather elements. In the present analysis, the available datasets were linked to compare the results of 272 students whose test data could be connected with their app-based observation activity.

The first-stage analysis showed that not all tasks with statistically significant positive change were equally associated with the intensity of data collection, measured as the number of observations submitted per student. The clearest activity-related gains appeared in tasks connected with the recognition of weather-related concepts and symbols, suggesting growth in disciplinary literacy. By contrast, no equally clear relationship emerged between the amount of collected data and tasks requiring explanation, reasoning, or decision-making.

An additional finding was that precipitation and its occurrence were the most frequently observed phenomena, which is understandable as these forms of weather observation are among the easiest for students to carry out. At the same time, although most submissions focused on one dominant type of observation, greater knowledge growth appeared to be associated with more diverse or cognitively demanding observation practices. Students with stronger knowledge gains more often submitted data on less frequent or more complex phenomena, such as slippery conditions, snow depth, and weather phenomena causing disruption.

These findings suggest that the educational value of citizen science may depend not only on the number of submitted observations, but also on the diversity and complexity of the observational tasks involved. The results highlight the potential of school-based citizen science to support the development of weather literacy and disciplinary knowledge, while also indicating the importance of programme design in maximising educational benefit for students.