Teaching and Learning About COVID-19 in the Midst of the Pandemic

• In Event: Infectious Learning and Teaching: Opportunities and Challenges of Integrating COVID-19 Into K–16 Education

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an example of why scientific literacy, conceptualized broadly to include science concepts, the nature of scientific evidence, and ideas about how science works, is so critical.

PERSPECTIVES. We contend that it is essential for science classrooms to be spaces in which learners explore complex issues like the COVID pandemic and develop science understandings associated with these issues and how science can be used to inform solutions and personal decision-making. Issues like pandemics, which are based in science and have societal influences and impacts, can be particularly challenging for teachers to introduce in science classrooms. Despite near universal agreement that scientific literacy is a worthy goal and that issues like the pandemic are ideal contexts for helping students develop scientific literacy, teachers are often reticent to introduce issues into their classrooms because the associated science may be emerging and curricular resources are limited. This project explores the experiences of science teachers and their students as they engaged with COVID-19 as a curricular anchor within high school science classes. Project goals included the following: 1) collaborate with science teachers to create and enact COVID-related curriculum materials; 2) study how teachers enact COVID-related materials; and 3) study student interests associated with learning about the pandemic and their information-finding preferences and practices.

METHOD. Data associated with teacher (n=10) perspectives on creating COVID-19 curricula and enacting these learning experiences were collected primarily through individual interviews.

Data on student (n=250) interest in learning about COVID-19 and preferences for information sources to inform their thinking about the pandemic were collected through a survey implemented at different time points during the pandemic.

FINDINGS. Key findings from the teacher-focused research include the following. Teachers were concerned with the potential mental health impacts associated with teaching about COVID-19 in the midst of the pandemic. They struggled to align COVID-themed instruction with Next Generation Science Standards but resolved this challenge by focusing on scientific modeling and characteristics of life (a required unit in existing curriculum). District policies around reopening had an out-sized impact on teachers’ abilities to enact the curriculum as they saw fit. Finally, teachers modified the COVID-19 materials based on the needs of their student populations and constraints associated with online and hybrid instruction. Key findings from the student-focused research suggest that students expressed unique patterns for the sources and formats of information they sought about COVID-19 during the pandemic and that these preferences influenced the types of media literacy strategies they employed when finding information about the pandemic. Results also suggested that students were generally more interested in pragmatic dimensions of the issue, such as how to protect themselves from the disease, as compared to more theoretical or conceptual dimensions of the issue. The implications of these findings, both from the teacher and student research strands, will be discussed.

Authors

• Li Ke, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Troy D. Sadler, University Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Patricia Friedrichsen, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Laura Zangori, University of Missouri - Columbia