Paper presented by J. Shirk and M.E. Krasny at the 88th Annual Meetings of the Ecological Society of America. Savannah, GA, 2003.

A range of current Student-Scientist Partnerships (SSP) reflects constituents’ often disparate needs, varying from curriculum-centered to data-driven. As more classrooms struggle to meet inquiry learning goals through research, standard protocols from an SSP can provide structure and guidance for teachers and the possibility of validating student data for database inclusion. Can high school students accurately collect more detailed biodiversity data than just presence/absence? And does student participation in the questioning process impact commitment to accurate research? High school students in Northern Virginia utilized a basic protocol to collect data for the national Terrestrial Salamander Monitoring Project, with some classrooms additionally designing a research question. Due to low numbers of salamanders captured, results concentrate on student experiences relative to the research process.