Students’ Prior Knowledge of Disease Spread and Prevention

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need for students to learn about public health issues, including the transmission of disease and methods for the prevention of epidemics. This study presents data from a project focused on developing an emergent systems microworld to help middle school students learn about these topics. The microworld is designed to help students model and test their ideas about how a disease spreads through a population and how an epidemic can be prevented. The paper presents an analysis of students’ prior knowledge of disease spread and prevention, which they shared during an activity preceding their exploration of the microworld. We present student ideas in categories of disease transmission, recovery from disease, and disease protection strategies. We describe their ideas and suggest how they may be integrated into the design of the microworld.