A Three-Lesson Teaching Unit Significantly Increases High School Students’ Knowledge about Epilepsy and Positively Influences Their Attitude towards This Disease

February A Three-Lesson Teaching Unit Significantly Increases High School Students' Knowledge about Epilepsy and Positively Influences Their Attitude towards This Disease Uwe K. Simon 0 1 Lisa Gesslbauer 0 1 Andreas Fink 0 1 0 1 Center for Didactics of Biology, Karl-Franzens-University Graz , Schubertstraße 51, 8010, Graz , Austria , 2 Institute of Psychology, Karl-Franzens-University Graz , Universitätsplatz 2/DG, 8010, Graz , Austria 1 Editor: Andrea Romigi, University of Rome Tor Vergata , ITALY - OPEN ACCESS Data Availability Statement: Data for statistical analyses are found in S2 Material. This is a summary file which comprises all data from all questionnaires used for the current analyses. All graphs presented in the manuscript and all conclusions drawn are based on these data. The study can be fully replicated making use of this file. If, however, a researcher wishes to study the original questionnaires, those are available in German upon request. Yet the questionnaires are not necessary to come to the conclusions presented, since all relevant data have Epilepsy is not a regular topic in many countries’ schools. Thus many people harbor misconceptions about people suffering from this disease. It was our aim to a) examine what grade ten students know and believe about epilepsy, and b) to develop and test a teaching unit to improve their knowledge and attitude. The test group comprised eight grade ten classes from six different Austrian high schools (54 girls and 51 boys aged 14–17), the control group (no intervention) five grade ten classes from the same schools (26 girls and 37 boys aged 14–17). The teaching unit consisted of three 45-min lessons using different methods and material. Changes in knowledge about and attitude towards epilepsy as a result of the intervention were psychometrically assessed in a pre-test intervention post-test design (along with a follow-up assessment two months after the intervention) by means of a questionnaire capturing different facets of epilepsy-related knowledge and attitude. Across all knowledge/attitude domains, students of the test group had a significantly improved knowledge about and a more positive attitude towards epilepsy and people suffering from it after the teaching unit. However, starting levels were different between the five knowledge/attitude domains tested. Medical background knowledge was lowest and consequently associated with the highest increase after the intervention. This study shows that epilepsy-related knowledge of many grade ten high school students is fragmentary and that some harbor beliefs and attitudes which require improvement. Our comprehensive but concise teaching unit significantly increased knowledge about epilepsy and positively influenced attitude towards individuals with epilepsy. Thus we recommend implementing this unit into regular school curricula. been included in the summary excel file which was used for SPSS statistical analyses. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Introduction Up to one per cent of the world’s population suffers from epilepsy making it one of the most frequent neurological diseases [ 1 ]. In Austria there are about 65,000 people with one or another form of epilepsy [ 2 ], which is roughly 0.8 percent of the total population. Consequently, about every 125th Austrian may develop epileptic symptoms in his or her lifetime. Approximately 30 per cent of all people with epilepsy show symptoms already during childhood [ 3 ]. However, there are many studies showing that individuals with epilepsy are often confronted with misconceptions about this disease [ 4–9 ]. Thus there is urgent need to introduce pupils to this disease and to study children’s and adolescents’ attitudes towards and knowledge about epilepsy. But epilepsy is not a regular topic in Austrian (and German) school curricula. As a consequence, knowledge about this disease relies solely on individual teachers’ efforts which usually results, if at all, in single-lesson presentations often prepared by students. Yet such a widespread disease, which furthermore demands precise knowledge about what to do during a seizure, requires more attention at school. From a social perspective, it is important to help individual students with epilepsy to overcome their fear that classmates may treat them unfriendly because of their perceived strange and uncontrolled behaviour. To know that their surrounding is aware of why seizures occur, how to act in such circumstances and that epilepsy is nothing to be afraid of or to make fun of will be an enormous relief for such children [ 10,11 ]. This is highly important, since the integration of people with epilepsy into public life is apparently still far from acceptable [ 12,13 ]. Many studies show that a minor but still relatively large proportion of a given nation’s population has misconceptions about epilepsy and has little knowledge about this disease [ 6,7,14–16 ]. It wa (...truncated)