The role of science learning in providing health education especially during Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Corona virus disease (COVID-19) has an impact on systems and processes, including the education system by implementing online learning. Although the learning system has changed, it doesn’t mean that educational goals have changed. During the current pandemic situation, many problems occured in the community, such as the circulation of hoax information, conspiracy theories and the behavior of disobeying health protocols. In dealing with this, education can help in health promotion. Science is a subject matter that affects all aspects of life, so science learning in school must also provide education about health. To achieve effective health communication during a pandemic, there are communication standard, namely six CERC principles; be first, be right, be credible, express empathy, promote action and show respect. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the role of science learning in providing health education in the current COVID-19 pandemic. With survey techniques and interviews with 110 science teachers, 94.4% of science teachers stated the need to provide health education during the science learning process, 5.6% of science teachers said it might be necessary to provide health education during the learning process and 0% of science teachers said there was no need to provide health education during the learning process. The methods used by science teachers to provide health education in the learning process are giving articles, news, videos and task of finding information and provide direct explanations. Analysis of the application of the CERC principles shows that in providing health education, the six principles of CERC are still not fully applied. The most widely applied principle was “promote action” while the least applied principle is “show respect”. Based on these results, it can be concluded that science learning played a role in providing health education during the COVID-19 pandemic.