Everyone has been interacting with the outside world since birth, creating ideas about various objects or phenomena. The main aim of the research was to identify the concepts of primary school students about viruses. In addition to finding out the level of ideas, additional aims were to determine the effect of gender, the degree of education…

This article outlines the results from an investigation on elementary school students designed to find out whether the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on their conceptualisation of microorganisms. We compared 9- to 11-year-old children's drawings and answers to questionnaires conducted before the pandemic (during 2017 and 2018, N = 137) with…

University of Idaho Extension educators developed an innovative approach to analyze the effectiveness of handwashing lessons taught to school-age children. A protocol was designed to determine if there was a significant decrease in bacterial Colony Forming Units (CFUs) before and after implementing an educational handwashing lesson. The protocol…

The current pandemic has highlighted the importance of hand hygiene as a preventive measure to avoid the transmission of diseases. It is a habit that should be reinforced during childhood, so that it lasts into adulthood. The main objective was to analyse and describe, through drawing, the mental schemas that 6-12 year-old pupils have about clean…

Bacteria, viruses, and other invisible creatures are, in brief, microorganisms. Especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the features of microorganisms, their density, and relevant precautions have grown in importance. Knowing the density of microorganisms at school will cause our cleaning habits to change. In this study, efforts were…

Questions often heard echoing through classrooms are: 'Why do I need to know this?' and 'When will I use this in real life?'. Working with the Centre for Industry Education Collaboration (CIEC), the authors chose a curriculum segment that aligned with some of their own research -- microorganisms: how they can harm us, help us and how we can use…

This study aims for students to comprehend the beneficial functions of bacteria with the traditional home yogurt leavening activity. Also, it aims to identify alternative concepts related to leavening and contribute to students' home yogurt consumption habits. The study is a case study. The study was conducted with 29 fifth-grade students studying…

Bringing Research into the Classroom (BRIC) engaged rural K-12 science teachers in sustained, mentored science research. BRIC's goal was to equip teachers with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to provide high-quality biomedical research opportunities for K-12 students and teachers. Programmatic elements included authentic, place-based,…

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown was particularly challenging for elementary students who experienced disruptions in almost all aspects of their daily activities. Our study addressed a dearth of U.S. studies documenting the adverse effects the pandemic created and continues to have for children by analyzing their drawings. This…

This article explores why certain types of conversations are effective to develop disciplinary knowledge during video game play while others are not. In particular, we analyze conversations among students playing an educational video game that focuses on the process of viral replication. To do so, we use an emergent qualitative coding strategy. In…

The world is changing: both a conventional and a vaccine passport are now needed to travel internationally. Mask mandates, and social distancing are the new norm in a rapidly changing society. These measures were put in place to control the spread of the highly infectious and often fatal COVID-19, caused by a viral agent, a microorganism, a…

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching how vaccines work in the body, and introduces a community outreach project and activity we piloted with youth. Our Nuestra Ciencia program addresses scientific misconceptions among bilingual elementary school children in engaging and scientifically accurate ways. Utilizing analogies and…

Connecting the public to concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an essential for technological advancement and inspiring future scientists, impacting both the communicator and the audience's understanding of scientific topics. Without proper communication of scientific knowledge, acceptance and implementation of…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all universities in the United States switched to online learning in March 2020. We, as educators, faced the reality of switching to online teaching using Zoom. Our approach was to use COVID-19 as the course content to help motivate preservice teachers (PSTs) and alleviate some of the challenges of online…

In an effort to reduce viral transmission, many schools are planning to reduce class size if they have not reduced it already. Yet the effect of class size on transmission is unknown. To determine whether smaller classes reduce school absence, especially when community disease prevalence is high, we merge data from the Project STAR randomized…