Mass Media and Health Communication During the Pandemic

Importance of specialized health communication has been demonstrated fully during the recent COVID 19 pandemic. New variants of the virus continue to emerge, the larger portion of the country’s population remains unvaccinated, and booster doses are becoming essential. Therefore, the need for sustained interest in health communication through mass media is far from over. Health communication helps public understand the threat and make informed choices about the preventive measures and treatment. Done effectively, it can produce behaviour change, prevent panic and ensure the participation of populations in governments’ public health measures. Healthcare sector possesses the necessary knowledge to impart this information to the media industry which is largely unstructured and learning from experiences. Therefore, the healthcare sector needs to communicate effectively with the mass media representatives in order to influence the population in adopting and continuing healthy behaviour to fight the pandemic.

Inquiry - Based Science Teaching: An Action Research Study

The need to provide students with more inquiry-based teaching is increasing in educational settings. It is the need of our Pakistani system also, particularly research studies to initiate and implement the process in many educational settings in Pakistan. This is so that science literacy can be fostered and more attention can be given to providing conceptual understanding to the students during the teaching learning process. My study is a minor addition to the knowledge of science teaching by using inquiry as a teaching strategy. I tried to study the impact of using an inquiry-based teaching approach on students' learning. The emphasis was on the nature of questions, students ask before and after implementing inquiry and the ways they seek knowledge through using this idea in the classroom. Roth (1992) and Tobin (1991) cited by Doster, (1997) suggest that ;the epistemology underlying most traditional practice in science classrooms is objectivism, which manifests itself in the teaching of science as a body of objective facts. Teaching science from this objectivist stance contradicts the philosophical basis of the nature of science. Agreeing with the author, I would say that teaching in science classrooms should not focus the objectivism, instead it is essential to nurture the philosophical basis of the nature of science by providing various practical opportunities of learning to the students, of which inquiry-based teaching could be one. The project was designed using the qualitative paradigm of research. It was an actionoriented study in which the focus was on students' learning. One experienced teacher volunteered for the study as a co-operative teacher. The purpose of the study was to provide opportunities to the students to come up with their own ideas and test them to validate their knowledge. Actually, I wanted to provide opportunities for students to explore, manipulate and inquire into things that are in their surroundings particularly by questioning them. I assumed that by teaching this approach, students would develop their inquisitiveness and learn more effectively. For this purpose, I used many innovative ideas to encourage students to ask questions, especially open and high-order questions. Dissertation Abstracts MEd V Class of 2002 35 The findings of the study show, that inquiry-based teaching produces a positive impact on students' learning. This claim is made in the light of the data gathered in the form of students' questions. In a class of 58 students, 329 written questions were asked during one focused