Study about the method of diseases teaching (construction of virtual disease museum)

2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 17500580
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Science education
• Research Institution: Shinshu University
• Principal Investigator: EHARA Takashi Shinshu University, School of Medicine, department of Histopathology, associate Professor, 医学部, 助教授 (00203646)
• Project Period (FY): 2005 – 2006
• Keywords: disease / teaching / high school / biology

Research Abstract

For the purpose of investigating youth's concern about diseases, an equate research was performed about the knowledge of breast cancer to Japanese high school and medical students. The results have shown a low level of knowledge and concern of Japanese high school and university students about the breast cancer. Most Japanese students think that gynecologists do handle the breast cancer. More surprisingly, a few students think a physician as an operator of breast cancer ! Other than breast cancer, most students can not tell the difference of orthopedics and plastic reconstruction surgery. As a next step, to compare the disease teaching in foreign countries, biology textbooks of high school level were compared among various countries including Japan, France, USA, China and Egypt. It became clear that there is not any subjects other than biology of which the contents are so different among various countries. The contents of biology textbooks are human-oriented in foreign countries investigated. Several diseases such as cancer and infectious diseases are included in the biology textbooks. In France, biology textbook of the junior high school last year only deals with the aspects of human. Diabetes mellitus is extensively written in the second year of French high school textbook. In contrast, the contents of biology textbook of the high school in Japan is plant-oriented and include few diseases. Textbook of USA in which Internet is introduced widely and extensively throughout textbook has a big volume and includes many diseases. This research revealed the poor knowledge of Japanese students for disease and necessity of disease teaching for them. One of the solutions for these problems is to establish a virtual disease museum which is open to everyone and can be used for the purpose of disease teaching and learning in schools as well as in home through internet.