Epidemiology in Middle School Science Curricula: a COVID-19 Pre–post Intervention

Abstract

It is of great importance that science educators teach COVID-19 and related pandemics to boost students’ scientific literacy. A mixed methods research design (pre-post test instrument [N = 86] and semi-structured interviews [N = 11]–August 2020 to June 2021) evaluated the ability of an intervention (12 h, three-session, 3-day, online workshop) to augment middle school inservice science teachers’ (Eastern Saudi Arabian province) ability to teach about medical terminology and the epidemiology of diseases. Teachers’ cognitive gains were measured through evaluating their knowledge, comprehension, and application of workshop content before and after the intervention. Descriptive statistics and inferential t tests revealed statistically significant cognitive differences overall (p