Discussion Draft

Through our research, we found that while we educated the participants of the
survey on the effects of lead, we were not as successful at teaching them about
what contained lead, finding that we only managed to increase their overall
suspicion of lead in objects. This can be seen in graph blah blah blah (see page x).
Along with determining this, we also found that while younger participants (ages 10
and under) scored the best on presurvey questions, after the education, they scored
the worst out of all the age groups on the postsurvey questions. This is attributed
this to younger children guessing well on the pretest and receiving a warped
impression of the information during education due to their younger age. While
having the overall worst posttest scores, children in this age group were found to be
taught best by educational methods that involved interactive performances and
active presentation (these methods of education were used to teach the
physiological effects of lead). This is evidenced by graph blah blah blah (see page
x).
We started this project by researching about the effects of lead and calcium to give
us thorough background knowledge on a topic which we could teach to the survey
participants. After completing this stage of initial background research, we created
pre and posttest surveys with which we could measure the impact of our education.
We crafted the separate learning stations at which we could inform the survey
participants, each with a distinctly different style of learning. Through these
different stations, we found which method of education works best on different
demographics. When we found that younger children learned best with interactive
and presentational education, we supported previous research that an interactive
learning setting does well for at least one section of the population (cite Anders
article), but mitigated previous studies that supported interactive learning as the
best method of education, finding instead that the methods of learning showed no
great improvement in scores relative to other stations (cite Jacobs and Nathans
articles). It is evident that learning for the physiological effects of lead wasnt
hugely improved relative to other learning methods (see graph blah blah blah on
page x).
This study does suffer from some limitations and uncontrolled variables. During the
initial stage of background research, not enough background research was
performed prior to developing teaching methods. More energy was spent
researching the actual science of lead and calcium than how our survey participants
should have been educated. In addition, the pre and posttest surveys that were
written for the participants were unclearly worded (for example, one question asked
if paint and gasoline were sources of lead contamination, without specifying
whether the lead and paint was pre or post-70s lead phaseout). Some questions
provided lists of objects that contained lead or calcium and participants were asked
to circle ones that they thought contained lead or calcium. In one question all of the
options were correct, leading participants to believe that the answers for the second
question were all correct as well, possibly leading to false positives. Uncontrolled
variables were incorporated when including different methods of teaching, however,
this turned out to be an advantage when secondary discoveries showed that

different methods of teaching had differing levels of effectiveness for various

demographics. The population of survey participants was also skewed
(unproportional amounts of middle-aged females were present). It was also found
that far more survey participants filled out the pretest than the posttest. In
conclusion, there may have been a general impression upon the participants that
lead is in everything after education, and that may have led to elevated levels of
incorrect answers identifying objects as containing lead in the posttest.
For future repetitions of this study, the aforementioned issues with the survey and
unintended biases in the population should be eliminated by writing a more clearly
worded survey and using a more balanced, proportional target audience. Next time
more emphasis should be placed on testing differing methods of education and their
effectiveness, as while that was not the primary research question of this study, it
arose as an interesting side point from our research data. Further studies on this
topic are warranted. In addition, the content matter of what should be taught would
best be changed to a topic that people have fewer misconceptions about. As people
have heard a lot of conflicting things about lead and calcium, choosing a lesserknown topic might cause clearer results.
Thanks to the data collected during this study, we have found correlations between
teaching with kinesthetic methods and the success of younger children learning
from these teaching methods. The findings, though secondary, are extremely
applicable to the world outside of scientific research. For example, elementary
school teachers working with students in this demographic could use these findings
to improve the effectiveness of their teachings and create a more efficient learning
environment. In addition, any other correlations hidden within these data could
make for very interesting findings on which methods could best educate which
demographics (age groups, housing areas, gender, etc.). With further analysis,
these findings could be extremely useful to educators, publishers, and any
organization looking to promote information on public health in a more efficient
manner, as in the asthma medication education group (cite Cheyennes article) (or,
if further studies are done on expanding the topic on which we educated the survey
participants, they could be useful to any educators).