Public understanding of the mathematical aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic

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Public understanding of the mathematical aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari – Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-authors:

  • Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel
  • Aviv J. Sharon – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel

As the COVID-19 pandemic became a top concern worldwide, media coverage became full of information that demands mathematical literacy, or numeracy, to interpret. Rarely have graphs, growth factors, or exponential growth indicators been so central in daily mainstream news outlets and over such a long period. In this study we examine the public’s understanding of mathematical notions that are basic for understanding the pandemic and predicting its spread. In addition, we wish to examine relations between people’s mathematical background, their attitudes towards mathematics and their understanding of the mathematics involved in the COVID-19 pandemic.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey with three components: (1) demographic information, including gender, age, education, occupation and the highest level of mathematics education; (2) attitudes towards mathematics; (3) Mathematics knowledge relevant to the pandemic, including: (3a) de-contextualized mathematics knowledge, such as identifying series of numbers that show linear growth vs. exponential growth, understanding the meanings of exponents etc., and (3b) contextualized mathematical knowledge, including the ability to correctly interpret authentic numbers and graphs of the pandemic used in the mainstream media and social media. The survey was distributed to a representative sample of the Jewish Israeli population (N=439).

Results indicate that the participants’ level of highschool mathematics predicted their success in the mathematical tasks. However, even those that had studied at the highest level did not always interpret correctly the mathematical information presented in the media. Moreover, the strongest predictor for understanding the mathematics in the media was found to be participants’ attitudes towards mathematics, even more than the mathematical knowledge gained in school. These results show that school mathematics, especially in its high levels, may prepare adults to understand critical information important for their wellbeing, such as at a time of a global pandemic. However, mathematical identity may significantly hinder adults’ engagement with such information.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Time

Sports fans’ science knowledge is relevant to their stance on COVID-19 guidelines, but only if they don’t care who wins

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari – Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-authors:

  • Yael Barel-Ben David – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel
  • Julia Bronshtein – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel
  • Yael Rozenblum – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel
  • Hani Swirski – Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel

In recent decades, science education has become mandatory in many countries, under the assumption that scientifically literate individuals make better, more logical, informed decisions. However, studies on ideology-related science controversies show that there tend to be larger differences of opinion between individuals with more education and knowledge of science, a phenomenon that is mainly attributed to motivated reasoning. Here we investigated the relationship between background in science, science knowledge, and motivated reasoning in an authentic scenario involving individuals” commitment to their favorite sports team during the COVID-19 outbreak. Sports fans (n = 264) completed an online survey on health guidelines obligating a basketball team to go into self-isolation in the midst of the Euroleague championships.

The findings indicated that being a fan of this particular team was the main predictor of participants’ responses: individuals with greater general science knowledge and greater knowledge of the coronavirus were more likely to say that players should stay in isolation, but only if they were not fans of that team. For fans, there was no correlation between general science knowledge or knowledge of the coronavirus and their stance on the need for isolation. This underscores the relevance of science knowledge in taking an informed position on science in everyday life, but also the overwhelming power of motivated reasoning.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Time

What’s new about public engagement with science on new media?

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari – Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-authors:
Massimiano Bucchi – Università di Trento
Lloyd Spencer Davis – University of Otago, New Zealand
Bruce V. Lewenstein – Cornell University, USA

Are fake news in science a new phenomenon? Should scientists organize and fight it, and if so, how? What should the education system teach about science in order to help future citizens to evaluate and interpret online science information? These are few of the questions discussed at PESO 2017 – Public Engagement with Science Online, an international research workshop that explored interactions between sciences, publics and social media, that took place at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology on June, 2017.

This group paper will first briefly present several of the contributions to the workshop: Lloyd Davis will discuss the rise of video as a means for science engagement, presenting unflattering finding showing that most science videos do not use the potential that web 2.0 has to offer. Bruce Lewenstein will discuss ‘fake’ and ‘truth’ and ‘reliable knowledge’ from an historical perspective, and their relevance to our theme of public engagement with science online. Massimiano Bucchi, will address The challenges of science communication 2.0 by talking about the crisis of mediators and visual science literacy, and Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, will seek evidence of the usefulness of science for non-scientists on social media by for examining science literacy of adults engaged with social-scientific issues online. These presentations will then be used as a trigger to discuss broader cross cutting issues, such as visualizations and video, trust and evaluation of expertise, what counts as success in public engagement in science, and thinking about local communities in connection with public engagement with science online.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Grouped paper
Theme: Society
Area of interest: Building a theoretical basis for science communication

What do you want to explore? Introducing personal research into a citizen science project

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari – Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-authors:
Barak Fishbain – Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel
Yaela N Golumbic – Faculty of Education in Technology and Science, Technion, Haifa, Israel

Involvement of volunteers in scientific research is a broad definition often used to describe citizen science. Many such projects incorporate science communication elements by providing scientific information, exchanging scientific knowledge, and engaging with science. While different models and levels of participation in citizen science exist, the majority of projects are limited to data collection and classification tasks which are based on established protocols and instructions. These projects maintain stiff regulations in order to ensure data quality and reliability. Despite the evident importance of these regulations, they may prevent routes of personal interest and constrain research flexibility. Taking the road less traveled by, we offer here a citizen science practice, which provides participants with multiple individually-led research opportunities. We demonstrate active participation, which enables participants to study their fields of interest within the scope of the project, determine relevance to their day-to-day life, and conduct personally-practical research. An example for such implementation is demonstrated in the citizen science initiative “Sensing the Air” for monitoring air-quality in the local environment. Throughout a two-year process, we followed the activities of twenty participants, from diverse educational and social backgrounds. These activities include the use of the project platform, personal research using mobile sensors, hazard reporting and engagement in social platforms. Using interviews, questionnaires, and reports written by participants, we examine participants’ requirements and identify different styles of participation. Participants’ personal interests directed their studies to examine air-quality in their proximity and resulted in new insights and understanding of scientific air-quality concepts. This study emphasizes the importance of multiple opportunities for participation, tailored to the needs of diverse audiences. These opportunities for personal research further induce personal scientific inquiry, data analysis and conclusion drawing in a personalized fashion. Hence, transforming citizen science into what citizens want it to be and increasing public engagement with science.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Society
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices

What are we trying to teach? A conceptually based approach to science communication training

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-author: Bruce Lewenstein

The rapid growth in public communication of science and technology has led to a highly diverse and large number of training programs. Each of these programs engages in teaching. Where there is teaching, there are learners. That shift to learning-centered approach is the focus of our project, asking: what are the learning goals of science communication training? As the PCST field matures, we believe it will be useful to identify a comprehensive set of learning goals for future trainings, ones that draw fully from the range of fields that comprise PCST. Learning goals identify what the teacher or trainer is trying to achieve. They provide a framework for deciding what will be counted as success and how evidence of learning will be gathered and analyzed at the individual level (assessment) and the course level (evaluation). We base our work on a set of six strands of learning developed for “learning science in informal environments” (Bell et al. 2009). Our adapted list includes learning outcomes in affective issues, content knowledge, methods, reflection, participation, and identity. We reviewed dozens of research articles describing and reviewing science communication training for scientists. From them we identified both explicit and implicit learning goals. These were classified according to the conceptual framework described above. We identified gaps in the outcomes especially in the areas of affective learning and identity formation. Ideas for evidence of success and items to evaluate them are suggested. We do not expect that any one program would attempt to achieve all the learning goals. But we believe that conceptual coherence can help course designers identify important goals. Creating a common language will increase the ability to compare outcomes across courses and programs, identifying approaches that best fit particular education, training, and communication contexts.

All But Naive. On the Importance of Articulating Hidden Moralities in Public Discussions on Science

Author: Hedwig te Molder, Wageningen University, Netherlands

Co-author: Wytske Versteeg

This paper examines the role of ‘hidden moralities’ in public discussions, in which a scientific truth, such as what healthy food is or real ADHD, is juxtaposed against ‘mere’ belief or experience. On the basis of a discourse analysis of public radio debates on ADHD (UK) and the flu shot (Netherlands), we argue that this type of debate – which apparently only deals with contested knowledge – touches moral issues of identity that are just as essential for the course of the debate as they are hard to recognize.

It is shown that callers use their experience as entry ticket to the debates, and then position it as having relevance beyond their own, individual domain. Rather than directly rejecting these claims, the radio hosts undermine callers’ experiential knowledge by portraying the callers as blindly trusting their own experience and therefore being naive. Callers subsequently use scientific knowledge, and allusions to scientific procedure in particular, to prove their ‘epistemic vigilance’. The results suggest that it is not so much the callers’ epistemic claims that are at stake here, but first and foremost their identity as a potentially gullible and non-rational person.

More broadly, the results provide a possible explanation for the frequent contestation of factual sources in public exchanges. If epistemic claims are tightly interwoven with identity work, such contestation might not be so much a matter of distrust in science, as is often argued, but a demonstration of one’s critical attitude. ‘Lay’ participants use both science and experience to show that they are all but naive. If we want to conduct fruitful discussions and include non-scientists in a better way, uncovering this everyday moral dimension is crucial. Science communication research should therefore not restrict itself to organized debates on science and technology but also include real-life discussions on these matters.

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