FINDINGS Stopping an Epidemic of Misinformation: Leveraging the K-12 Science Education System to Respond to Ebola (EBOLA 2015)
FINDINGS
The results that follow include all grade ranges and are organized in four categories:
Teaching about Ebola
The survey asked teachers about whether they had spent class time on Ebola and what influenced their decisions to address Ebola or not. Those teachers reporting they addressed Ebola were also asked how much class time was devoted to the topic and what instructional activities were used. The findings related to teaching about Ebola are presented below.
A large proportion of teachers, regardless of grade range, devoted some class time to Ebola. Life science teachers were the most likely to focus on the topic.
Table 1 show the percent of respondents who devoted class time to Ebola. Overall, the percentage of teachers who did increased from elementary school (46 percent) to higher grade ranges (81 percent for middle and 76 percent in high school). In middle and high school, over 90 percent of those who taught only life science devoted some class time to Ebola. Also, middle school, non-life science teachers were more likely than high school non-life science teachers to
devote class time to Ebola (68 percent and 44 percent, respectively).
Of those who spent class time on Ebola, most elementary teachers spent one class session, while most middle and high school teachers devoted more than one class session.
The majority of elementary teachers who taught about Ebola devoted one class session, while most middle and high school teachers devoted more than one class session (see Table 2). High school life science classes were more likely than non-life science classes to spend more than one class period on Ebola. The average lesson on Ebola lasted 25–30 minutes (see Table 3).
Although most teachers spent about one class period on Ebola, some spent substantially more. The following vignette, based on an interview with a high school biology teacher, illustrates extensive class time on Ebola.
Vignette 1: Extensive Class Time on Ebola in a Life Science Class
Ms. Donnelly2 teaches several 9th–12th grade Biology classes at a semi-rural, public school in North Carolina.
She has a degree in Biology and has been teaching for 27 years.
Ms. Donnelly’s Ebola-related instructional decisions occurred during the early days of the outbreak, in the spring of 2014, when she and a fellow biology teacher were planning for the upcoming year. They were discussing a text for the honors-level class to read for a semester-long book project: “I just said, ‘You know,
maybe we should do [The Hot Zone] now because I just heard on the news that there was a case of [Ebola],’ or
something. We talked about it, and we just made that decision right then…We put together this book project
before we went home for the summer.”
Donnelly and her colleague found a wealth of resources to go along with the text: “There were 300 and some questions that go with this book. We went through really quickly and picked the ones that we thought were
appropriate for our students.” The students generally did reading assignments and answered questions at home
and then had in-class discussions during subsequent class periods. In addition to the book project, Ms. Donnelly played National Public Radio stories for her classes, mainly about the human impact of the outbreak. Students also explored a Howard Hughes Medical Institute virtual virology lab, watched the movie Outbreak, and completed a viral timeline that was used to document the history of Ebola and compare Ebola to other viruses. The near-constant media reports also became rich sources of classroom discussion material. Her students discussed how the 2014 outbreak compared to the outbreak discussed in The Hot Zone, the viral lifecycle of Ebola, and various media stories throughout the semester-long unit.
Life science teachers were much more likely than non-life science teachers to address Ebola as a part of their curriculum.
When they addressed Ebola, life science teachers were almost twice as likely as non-life science teachers to address Ebola as a part of their curriculum (see Table 4). Interestingly, almost half of life science teachers reported addressing Ebola as a standalone topic, suggesting that for at least some, part of their treatment fell within their curriculum while other parts did not. Not surprisingly, non-life science teachers were more likely than their life science counterparts to
treat Ebola as a standalone topic, unrelated to the rest of their science curriculum.
Ebola appears to have been taught through whole class discussions and driven by student questions.
The survey presented teachers with a list of instructional activities that could have been used to address Ebola (see Table 5). Regardless of grade range or focus of the class (life science or not), the most prevalent instructional activities used by all teachers were question-and-answer, with students asking questions (around 85 percent of teachers), and whole class discussion (just under 70 percent). Teachers of life science classes were much more likely than those of non-life science classes to have students watch videos about Ebola.
The following vignette illustrates how students’ questions shaped one teacher’s instruction about Ebola.
Vignette 2: How Students’ Questions Shaped One Teacher’s Instruction
Mr. Calabria teaches both 8th grade science and 12th grade Environmental Systems in adjacent middle and high
schools in rural Texas, near Dallas. Though not a science major in college, Mr. Calabria has a longstanding
interest, and has taken several science courses at the University of Texas. He follows science advances in the news, and student questions about Ebola heightened his interest: “I keep up with all science news. It would
have been based on Washington Post and New York Times reports. Then, after the kids were bringing it up, I
started really looking at the CDC [to] make sure I had as accurate information as I could get them.”
Being near Dallas, where a nurse was diagnosed with Ebola virus disease, the level of talk about Ebola ran high
in Mr. Calabria’s community. Intense student interest, frequent questions, and widely expressed misconceptions were important factors in shaping his Ebola instruction for his classes. “They didn’t understand how it was transmitted. They thought if you were so much on the same block as somebody who had Ebola, you
were going to get Ebola.”
Several factors worked together to lead Mr. Calabria to treat Ebola differently in his two courses. For the 12th
grade Environmental Systems course, students’ questions about Ebola tied to learning standards by bringing up
population limits and growth, impacts of environmental factors on organism interactions, and dependence of transmission rates on changes from rural to urban culture. The lack of standardized testing for his 12th grade
course allowed more time for addressing student questions about Ebola. In addition, Mr. Calabria found that
the depth of student interest encouraged a welcome break from a “weak textbook” to explore a topic with real-world relevance. Ebola did not fit as well with his 8th grade science standards; however, the intensity of Ebola
interest drove him to take time to respond to students’ questions despite his reluctance to diverge from
preparing students for standardized testing.
The most commonly addressed topics by all teachers were defining Ebola and how the virus is transmitted, including how to prevent transmission.
The survey also provided a list of topics teachers could have addressed during Ebola instruction (see Table 6). Regardless of grade range, the topics most commonly addressed by teachers were defining Ebola (more than 90 percent of teachers) and how the virus is transmitted (ranging from 68 percent of elementary teachers to 93 percent of high school teachers), including how to prevent transmission (ranging from 58 percent of elementary teachers to 79 percent of high school teachers). In general, it appears that life science classes addressed more topics than nonlife science classes. Specifically, life science classes were more likely to address the following topics: symptoms of Ebola in humans, how Ebola is diagnosed, how Ebola is treated, and history of Ebola. These findings are consistent with life science teachers spending more time than nonlife science teachers on Ebola (see Tables 2 and 3).
The following vignette illustrates how one teacher addressed multiple topics about Ebola.
Vignette 3: In-Depth Exploration of Ebola in a Biology Class
Mr. Fisher has been teaching various levels of Biology for five years. His current assignment is in suburban
New Jersey at a large public high school. Due to his personal interest in microbiology and infectious diseases
and a strong background in the sciences, Mr. Fisher is very familiar with Ebola. A trip to Africa also spurred
additional research.
Mr. Fisher provided Ebola-related instruction through a multi-day unit in all of his life science classes. Several
factors encouraged him to explore this topic in depth: student interest, the abundance of misconceptions about
the disease in his classes, the availability of resources (particularly through the CDC website), his own
understanding of Ebola, and the age appropriateness of the topic for his students.
As expected in a multi-day unit, Mr. Fisher provided students with various instructional activities focused on
Ebola. The class read and answered questions about an article focused on infection called, “You Can’t Catch
Ebola From a Giraffe in Tanzania;” linked the spread of Ebola to a lab activity that modeled disease
transmission; watched news clips on YouTube as well as a PBS documentary focused on outbreak in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as Zaire) during the 1990s; and even had a guest speaker from
the county health department who addressed the basic biology of the virus along with its transmission and
history. Throughout the unit, Mr. Fisher identified student misconceptions in discussions and tailored his
instruction to replace misinformation with facts about the disease. When asked about the misconceptions
students brought to the classroom, he stated, “They think that it’s airborne. They think that Africa is a country
when it’s a continent, and they think that every country in Africa has Ebola, that there’s an outbreak going on in
New Jersey, and that they’re gonna get it in the United States.” This abundance of misinformation was another
reason Mr. Fisher chose to include varied aspects of the Ebola situation in his instruction. He was also able to
loosely tie his Ebola instruction to his cellular biology unit, which is when he discusses viruses. He stated, “In
our curriculum…you cover eukaryotes and prokaryotes, and of course, you cover bacteria with prokaryotes, and
that’s where I kind of throw in viruses.”
Regardless of grade range, about 8 in 10 respondents indicated that their students asked about the virus before the class discussed it.
The survey included a question about whether students asked about Ebola before teachers began addressing it. For all grade ranges, about 80 percent of teachers who reported devoting some class time to Ebola indicated that their students asked about the virus first (see Table 7). There was no significant difference between life science classes and non-life science classes.
The percentage of teachers who would have addressed Ebola if students had not asked increases with the grade range.
The survey also asked respondents to indicate if they would have addressed Ebola if students had not asked. Approximately half of elementary teachers said they would have addressed the topic (see Table 8). In secondary grades, life science teachers were much more likely than non-life science teachers to indicate that they would have addressed Ebola even if students had not asked. Still, the percentage of non-life science teachers is quite substantial—55 percent of middle grade teachers and 64 percent of high school teachers.
2 All teacher names are pseudonyms.
Factors in Teachers' Decision Making
A major focus of the questionnaire was identifying factors that influenced teachers’ decisions regarding whether to address Ebola or not. The survey presented a list of potential factors and asked teachers to respond on a three-point scale where 1 was “discouraged me from addressing Ebola with my students”; 2, “not a factor”; and 3, “encouraged me to address Ebola with my students.” An exploratory factor analysis suggested that the items formed three categories of influences: Likelihood of Lesson Success, Policy, and Influence of Others. The items in each of these categories are shown in Figure 2 along with the accompanying internal reliabilities.3
Tables 9–11 present the results grouped by these overarching factors and grade range. Note that
only two points of the response scale (discouraged and encouraged) are presented; all other
responses were in the “not a factor” category.
Students’ interest and age appropriateness of the topic were the most encouraging factors in teachers’ decision to address Ebola.
All teacher respondents who taught about Ebola indicated two factors as the most encouraging in their decision to address the topic: student interest (93 percent or above for all grade ranges) and age appropriateness (ranging from 52 percent of elementary to 90 percent of high school teachers). See Tables 9–11. Also, two-thirds of high school respondents indicated their knowledge of Ebola as an encouraging factor. Among elementary school teachers who did not address Ebola, appropriateness of topic for the age group they teach was one major discouraging factor (62 percent). Among the middle and high school teachers who did not address Ebola, over one-third indicated state/district curriculum standards for science discouraged them from addressing the topic (see Tables 9–11). Regardless of grade range, several factors were indicated by one-third or more of teachers who did not teach about Ebola as discouraging them from addressing the topic:
- Availability of time for science instruction in general (48–70 percent)
- Knowledge of how to teach about Ebola (roughly 45 percent for all)
- School/district pacing guides for science (36–61 percent)
- Availability of resources for teaching about Ebola (39–50 percent)
- Knowledge of Ebola (36–42 percent)
Student interest was the most important single factor for teachers who addressed Ebola.
An open-ended question survey asked teachers who addressed Ebola to identify the single most important factor in their decision making. Teachers could choose from the list presented or identify a new one. Regardless of grade range, student interest was by far the most frequently mentioned “single most important factor” among those who addressed Ebola (see Table 12). No other factor was identified by more than 8 percent. The most frequently cited factors among those who did not address Ebola were different for each grade range. Among elementary teachers, age appropriateness of the topic was the most frequently cited factor (33 percent); in middle grades, district/state standards for science instruction (31 percent); and in high school, either availability of time for science instruction (21 percent) or district/state standards for science instruction (20 percent).
3 The internal reliability of Influence of Others composite was quite low (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.348 (elementary);
0.565 (middle); 0.382 (high)). It is important to note that there was very little variation in teachers’ responses to
these items, which may partially account for the low reliability. The overwhelming majority of ratings were in the
“not a factor” category.
Teachers' Sources of Information
In order to explore where teachers were getting their information about Ebola, teachers completing the survey were asked how they searched for information about Ebola and where they obtained information. In addition, teachers were queried about the usefulness of the information they found in planning their instruction. Findings about teachers’ sources of information are described below.
Regardless of grade range, teachers were most likely to use the Internet to search
for information about Ebola.
Teachers who taught about Ebola were roughly twice as likely as those who did not to report searching for information about the topic (see Table 13). Of those who searched for information, the vast majority reported using the Internet (see Table 14). A high percentage of teachers (ranging from 63 percent in elementary to 74 percent in high school) also indicated that they used websites that are not specifically news related (e.g., Centers for Disease Control, National
Institutes of Health).
Among those who taught about Ebola, respondents most frequently used websites from health organizations as sources of information.
The survey asked respondents to indicate the various media sources they used as a source of information about Ebola. Tables 15–17 present the percentage of respondents who indicated they used each source a moderate amount or to a great extent. Regardless of grade range, websites from health organizations (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health) appear to be the most frequently used sources of information by far for teachers who taught about Ebola (ranging from 78 percent of elementary teachers to 91 percent of high school teachers). Popular science magazines (e.g., Scientific American, Discover) were also noted by teachers who taught about Ebola as a common source of information, as were TV news programs, on-line news sites, and newspapers (print or on-line). Interestingly, the only source indicated by more than 50 percent of those who did not teach about Ebola was TV news
programs.
Respondents reported that the most useful source of information, regardless of grade range, was websites from health organizations (e.g., the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health).
The survey asked respondents to rate the usefulness of the sources of information they reported, using a four-point scale where 1 was “not at all useful”; 2, “minimally useful”; 3, “moderately useful”; and 4, “very useful.” (see Table 18). Teachers overwhelmingly rated websites from health organizations (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health) as moderately or very useful in planning Ebola instruction (over 80 percent of respondents regardless of grade range).
Several sources of information were rated as “minimally useful” or “not at all useful” by approximately half or more teachers.
There were several sources rated as “minimally useful” or “not at all useful” by teachers (see Table 19). Radio talk shows were rated low in usefulness by approximately half or more middle school and high school teachers. Two sources of information—print on-line non-science magazine and printed publications from teacher professional organizations—were rated low by approximately half or more high school teachers. Regardless of grade range, several sources of
information were rated by approximately half or more of teachers as “minimally useful” or “not at all useful” including:
- Local news stations;
- National broadcast TV news programs;
- 24 hour TV news;
- TV talk shows;
- Online-only sources (e.g., Huffington Post, Yahoo News, AOL);
- Social Media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter);
- Resources provided by their school districts;
- Conversations with other teachers; and
- Conversations with others (i.e., not health professionals or teachers).
Teachers' Knowledge about Ebola
In order to examine teacher knowledge about Ebola, the survey asked respondents to answer 20 true/false statements about Ebola and also asked them to rate their confidence in the correctness of their answer. Specifically, questions were asked about the Ebola virus itself, how it is transmitted, and how to prevent transmission. The findings from teachers’ responses to these items follow below.
The majority of respondents, regardless of grade range, answered most of the statements about Ebola correctly. However, those who taught about Ebola had higher test scores and confidence scores than those who did not teach about Ebola.
Scores were created from teachers’ responses to the true/false statements as well as their ratings of their confidence in the correctness of their answer (see Table 20). On average, respondents answered three-fourths of the true/false questions correctly. Regardless of grade range, the teachers who addressed Ebola scored higher on the test and rated their confidence higher than the teachers who did not teach Ebola.
The majority of teachers answered two questions incorrectly, one of which appeared to be a focus of instruction.
All but two true/false statements were answered correctly by about 60 percent of respondents. These two questions were answered correctly by less than 50 percent of the respondents for all grade ranges (see Tables 21–23). The question that focused on drug availability for treating people infected with the Ebola virus was answered incorrectly by 64 percent of elementary school teachers and 60 percent of middle and high school teachers. The other question focused on how the Ebola virus is transmitted and was answered incorrectly by 81 percent of elementary teachers, 69 percent of middle school teachers, and 67 percent of high school teachers.
Interestingly, transmission was one of the most frequently covered topics. Teachers’ confidence level for those two questions did not vary from the confidence levels of the other answers where the majority of teachers responded correctly, suggesting that teachers’ confidence did not align particularly well with their knowledge.
