New Article: Helping science teachers tackle misinformation and controversial topics

Posted by The Hechinger Report on September 28, 2021

A program is training teachers how to talk about the pandemic, vaccines and masks in places where the science is up for debate.

How do you teach kids about science when there is so much scientific misinformation and conflict over the truth about coronavirus, vaccines and masks?

For the staff at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), the problem isn’t new. The nonprofit, which works from the local level to the national level to make sure students across the U.S. have an accurate science education, has been guiding teachers on how to handle politically fraught issues like evolution and climate change for years.

Questions about masking, sending kids to school, new variants, CDC policy changes and conspiracy theories prompted the NCSE to develop a new set of lessons, called the “nature of science,” to tackle the most common misconceptions about science and how science works. The lessons are based around public health, epidemiology and the coronavirus pandemic because there’s “an urgent need for people to understand those topics,” said Ann Reid, executive director of NCSE.

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