Elsner Jamie N, Sadler Troy D, Zangori Laura, Friedrichsen Patricia J, Ke Li
School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 100 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 USA.
College of Education, University of Missouri, 611 Conley Ave, Columbia, MO 65211 USA.
Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res. 2022;4(1):11. doi: 10.1186/s43031-022-00053-2. Epub 2022 Apr 4.
COVID-19 creates an opportunity for science classrooms to relate content about viruses to students' personal experiences with the pandemic. Previous researchers have shown that students are interested in crisis situations like disease outbreaks; however, they primarily acquire information about these events through internet sources which are often biased. We argue that it is important to understand student interest, concerns, and information-seeking behaviors related to COVID-19 to support science classroom learning and engagement about the virus and other potential outbreaks. We surveyed 224 high school students and analyzed their responses to six open-ended questions. We found that students expressed the most interest in topics related to the origin of COVID-19 and vaccines. Their greatest concerns included contracting the virus or someone they know contracting the virus and vaccine distribution. Of our sample, only 6.7% reported using their teachers as their source of COVID-19 information. Science classrooms have the potential to pique students' situational interest by discussing COVID-19 topics that are important to students, which can increase their academic performance, content knowledge, attention, and engagement in learning about viruses. Moreover, classroom instruction about COVID-19 by teachers has shown to alleviate students' stress and anxiety. We provide key areas of student interest about COVID-19 to help educators address students' questions and improve curricular resources on viral pandemics.
新冠疫情为科学课堂创造了一个契机，使其能够将有关病毒的内容与学生在疫情中的个人经历联系起来。先前的研究表明，学生对诸如疾病爆发等危机情况感兴趣；然而，他们主要通过往往带有偏见的网络来源获取有关这些事件的信息。我们认为，了解学生与新冠疫情相关的兴趣、担忧和信息寻求行为，对于支持科学课堂学习以及学生对该病毒和其他潜在疫情爆发的参与度而言至关重要。我们对224名高中生进行了调查，并分析了他们对六个开放式问题的回答。我们发现，学生对与新冠疫情起源和疫苗相关的话题表现出了最大的兴趣。他们最担心的问题包括感染病毒或他们认识的人感染病毒以及疫苗分发。在我们的样本中，只有6.7%的学生表示将老师作为他们获取新冠疫情信息的来源。科学课堂有潜力通过讨论对学生来说很重要的新冠疫情话题来激发学生的情境兴趣，这可以提高他们的学业成绩、内容知识、注意力以及对病毒学习的参与度。此外，教师在课堂上对新冠疫情的教学已证明能够减轻学生的压力和焦虑。我们提供了学生对新冠疫情感兴趣的关键领域，以帮助教育工作者解答学生的问题，并改进关于病毒性大流行的课程资源。
