introduction Science Teachers as Public Health Educators: How Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Reshaped the Roles and Experiences of K-12 Science Teachers? (COVID 2022)
Introduction
In the spring of 2020, Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI) was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF Award DRL–2027397) to study how K–12 science teachers react when urgent science-related issues such as COVID1 emerge. Encouragingly, the study revealed that science teachers across the nation played a critical part of the nation’s response to the pandemic by (1) providing students with accurate scientific information about COVID, (2) helping students evaluate sources of information about COVID, and (3) increasing student understanding of the nature of science (NOS, e.g., how science generates and refines knowledge). Additionally, science teachers took it upon themselves to support student mental health, doing their best to calm student fears, answer students’ urgent questions, and address widespread misconceptions. In these ways, science teachers assumed the role of public health educators.
In early 2022, HRI received support from NSF (Award DRL–2204901) to build on and expand knowledge generated by our original study. This follow-up study delved into how the pandemic reshaped K–12 science teachers’ roles, including how long and how often they continued to address COVID in their instruction, how their teaching about COVID changed over time, and factors that exerted the greatest influence on their teaching about COVID. Additionally, the study provided an opportunity to gather important information about the impacts of COVID on science teachers themselves, including the manageability of workload, opportunities for professional growth/development, physical/mental wellness, and job satisfaction. The study addressed the following research questions:
- How does the pandemic continue to influence teachers’ science instruction (e.g., instructional time, instructional strategies), and how has that influence shifted?
- How has teaching about COVID evolved? What new topics (e.g., vaccines) have they taken up in the context of COVID?
- What factors now exert the greatest influence on science teachers’ teaching about COVID, and how do those differ from the factors at play in the spring of 2020?
- What are the impacts of the pandemic on science teachers themselves, including manageability of workload, opportunities for professional growth/development, physical/mental wellness, and job satisfaction?
COVID is likely not the last urgent global health concern our nation will face. As such, this study is important for helping the field better understand the role that science teachers can play in a national response, both now and during the next such crisis. The study is also important for understanding the factors that impacted science teachers’ COVID-related instruction so that we can better support them in fulfilling a critical public health function. Further, it is important to draw attention to the far-reaching impacts of the COVID pandemic on science teachers themselves, as these individuals are uniquely and precariously situated at the intersection of knowledge dissemination and contentious public policy measures.
1Throughout the remainder of this report, we will use the term “COVID” to refer to both the virus and the disease. However, we will use the individual terms if we are specifically referring to one or the other.