History of Science & COVID-19
Teaching opportunities and constraints in Portugal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23882/rmd.22097Keywords:
Learning, COVID-19, History of Science Teaching, History of Science, PandemicsAbstract
The current pandemic that we all face, caused by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, has an unquestionable impact on our routines and way of thinking, also affecting the course of school activities. Science becomes even more noticeable in our society, as it became crucial to understand the virus, the disease, and its implications in our daily life. When it comes to science teaching, the pandemic highlighted for the need of our students to understand how science develops (nature of science) and to develop competences that allow them to overcome a diversity of challenges and to take informed and conscious decisions. In this way, resorting to the current pandemic context, as well as to the historical pandemic contexts may enhance students’ learning of all educational levels.
Therefore, it was constructed and validated a questionnaire to understand how history of science, namely the history of pandemics, as well as the current pandemic context were focused on classes in Portugal. Questionnaires were sent by email, asking teachers from basic to secondary school to anonymously complete them online. This study involved 58 teachers of different subjects from the North of Portugal.
We verified that a substantial number of teachers referred to have resorted more to the history of pandemics, taking into account the current context, indicating that students revealed motivated. Despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, we consider that Science Education came out of this pandemic with a revamped relevance, being teachers training and the development of materials/didactical resources fundamental for a different approach on pandemic history and the current pandemic situation, in order to better be aligned with Science Education research.
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