Teaching critical thinking about health information and choices in secondary schools: human-centred design of digital resources

Identifying and recruiting participating stakeholders

We defined stakeholders as people or organisations that have a vested interest in the process or results of the study. Intended users – secondary school teachers and students – were the key stakeholders. Additional stakeholders included curriculum developers and other education policymakers, school administrators, parents, educational researchers, researchers in public or clinical health, and health professionals.

For the purpose of providing continuous input, we established groups of stakeholders in each country early in the project. We formed teacher networks, recruiting via formal invitation letters to teachers who worked in a mix of government funded and private schools, with varied ICT resources (Uganda), and in rural, semi-rural, and urban environments (Kenya and Rwanda). We formed student networks by asking members of the teacher networks to suggest lower secondary school students who were interested, likely to contribute, and able to participate without adversely affecting their schoolwork, sending them formal invitations and assent forms, and consent forms to parents. Due to Covid-related school closures in parts of Development Cycle 1, we also established “home networks” of students that we had access to when schools were closed. Home networks included both students that were already recruited to the student network and additional students whom team members could easily reach from nearby communities. We employed convenience sampling and used the same assent forms and consent forms to parents as for the student networks.

We engaged with the national curriculum development offices to establish channels of contact and collaboration. We formed national advisory panels of policy makers at the ministerial and regional and district levels, school directors, head teachers, leaders of teacher unions, and representatives of parents’ groups and civil society. We created an international advisory panel of people from 18 countries who had expertise in education, education policy, and relevant areas of research, such as health literacy, evidence-informed decision making, science communication and ICT. Additionally, during the final cycle of development, we recruited seven schools across the three countries to pilot use of the resources in one or more classes over a school semester.

Apart from people in the international advisory panel, many of whom were a part of our existing professional networks, and some of the students in home networks, we did not have established relationships with the stakeholders prior to the onset of this project.

Details of how we selected and recruited each stakeholder group and characteristics of participants and schools are described in Tables 1-3. More information about the methods, degrees, and nature of engagement with different stakeholders, can be found in a protocol for evaluating stakeholder engagement.³⁸

Phase 1: Groundwork

The groundwork phase consisted of a series of preliminary studies. More detail about the methods and results can be found in separate publications (see overview in Table 4).

Analysing contexts

To inform the development of the resources, as well as their potential implementation in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda lower secondary schools, we explored if there was demand for learning resources to teach critical thinking; if such resources were in use; how the content maps onto existing curricula; what administrative approval was necessary; what ICT infrastructure is available in schools and how it is used in schools. We analysed the three country contexts. Detailed methods are reported in a separate publication.^39–41

To synthesize findings from these studies in a way that was useful for developing educational resources, we drew on the the behaviour change wheel.⁴² This is a framework for characterising and designing interventions for behaviour change, built around three essential conditions for change: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation (the COM-B system). We organised findings from the three context analyses according to these three themes. The synthesized findings from these three context analyses supplemented our original set of development aims and provided a much more detailed understanding of contextual challenges before we started the development phase.

Prioritising IHC Key Concepts

Due to the scope of our research funding, as well as the pandemic and school closures, we could not pilot and evaluate resources that took longer to use than one school semester. To prioritise which of the 49 IHC Key Concepts to include in the learning goals for the resources, we organised a structured, iterative consensus process with curriculum specialists, teachers, and researchers. Detailed methods are reported in a separate publication.⁴³

Identifying teaching strategies

To identify effective, relevant teaching strategies to inform the resources, we conducted an overview of systematic reviews of strategies for teaching critical thinking. Detailed methods are reported in a separate protocol.⁴⁴

Collecting examples

To identify relevant and engaging examples for the resources, we interviewed Kenyan, Rwandan, and Ugandan secondary school students (aged 14 to 16) from the student networks, via WhatsApp. We collected examples of health actions, their claimed and actual effects, and information sources. The students rated their interest in a broad range of health actions and conditions, and we used those with higher scores as examples in the resources. Detailed methods are reported in an online report.⁴⁵

Phase 2: Development cycles

Starting with what we learned and developed in the preliminary studies, we developed resources in three iterative cycles of content creation and feedback. Each development cycle (Figure 2) included:

Figure 2. Single development cycle.

We also sought ad hoc feedback from the student and teacher networks as needed.

Generating ideas

We generated content and design ideas in two ways: brainstorming³³ internally, within the team; and identifying ideas suggested in external feedback, from participating stakeholders.⁴⁷ We selected ideas based on considerations such as consistency with what teachers and students said they valued, and ease of implementation.

Prototyping

A prototype is a sketch or model. We developed increasingly refined prototypes in each cycle. We used the platforms Google Drive (including Google Docs and Google Slides) and Adobe XD for drafting, editing, and sketching. We drafted and edited text using Google Docs, exported early prototypes to PDF format, and used Google Slides and Adobe XD later to create interactive sketches. Final versions were published as web pages, using Google Drive as a content editing platform.

Testing prototypes and collecting data

The three PhD fellows conducted interviews in their respective settings, supported by their research assistants. They had university degrees (Bachelor of Statistics, Master of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Master of Public Health, and Master of Community Health and Development) and have attended PhD-level courses in qualitative study methods.

Individual interviews employing user testing methods

Using semi-structured guides⁴⁸ that were pilot tested, the three PhD fellows conducted user test with individual teachers and students, to explore how they experienced prototypes and how we might make improvements. Data were collected face to face or online when covid measures restricted face to face meetings. When possible, user testing immediately followed a pilot lesson, so the participant had their experiences from the lesson fresh in mind. Interview duration was approximately one hour. Occasionally, teams printed the digital prototypes on paper to collect feedback where there was no access to a device or internet connection.

Each user testing session had three main parts. First, interviewers introduced themselves and the reasons for the interview. Next, they employed a think-aloud approach: a method of qualitative data collection that encourages the participant to articulate their thoughts while performing a task,^49–51 in this case reviewing prototypes of the resources. The last part was conducted as a semi-structured interview.

We captured data as observers’ notes and audio recordings. We designed the interview guides to explore different facets of the user experience, including usefulness, understandability, usability, credibility, desirability, and identification, based on a revised version of Morville’s framework of user experience (Table 5).³⁴

Group interviews

The PhD fellows conducted semi-structured interviews with groups of students or teachers to explore their experiences of the prototypes, using pilot-tested interview guides.⁴⁸ When possible, interviews were scheduled immediately after a pilot lesson when the participants had their experiences fresh in mind. Sessions lasted approximately one hour.

We chose group interviews, rather than user testing or individual interviews, when we anticipated that the former would improve the quality of the data, for instance by increasing students’ confidence in speaking with researchers. Group interviews took place at schools or other locations determined to be practical for the participants. After introducing themselves and explaining reasons for the interview, one researcher moderated and one or more researchers observed and took notes. Sometimes, teachers were present during student interviews. With written informed consent (from parents and teachers) and assent (from students), we audio-recorded sessions.

Piloting and observation

We facilitated pilots of the prototypes to explore how teachers and students used and experienced them in as natural settings as possible. Early pilots involved single lessons, with one of the PhD fellows sometimes assuming the role of the teacher. These took place both at schools and in other settings, such as students’ neighbourhoods, when schools were closed due to the pandemic. The final set of pilots included a full set of lessons taught by teachers at schools, over a school term. (In Uganda, although schools were still closed, we got permission for students from the student network and teachers to meet at the schools for the purpose of conducting pilot lessons.) PhD fellows or research assistants observed and took notes using a structured guide,⁴⁸ without intervening. We followed up pilots with either individual or group interviews.

“Critical Thinking about Health” Test

After piloting a full set of lessons, students took the “Critical Thinking about Health” Test.⁵² Administering the test had two purposes: validating the items included in the test and giving us a sense of whether the prototypes had the intended effects. We report the validation in detail in a separate article.⁵²

Consulting the advisory groups

Twice annually, we emailed the international advisory group, to update them on the project, and ask for feedback on specific parts or prototypes. We entered their feedback in a spreadsheet,⁴⁷ familiarised ourselves with those data, and discussed and agreed on how to deal with any specific suggestions. We held face-to-face meetings with the national advisory groups to keep them updated and seek feedback related to ensuring the sustainability and future scaling up of resources, if shown to be effective.

Data analysis

We transcribed and translated several of the audio recordings from individual and group interviews. The three PhD fellows and their three research assistants reviewed transcriptions, their own interview and observation notes, and recordings, and extracted data about negative and positive experiences. They entered the data into Excel spreadsheets,⁴⁷ supplemented with quotations where relevant, and tagged the data using pre-determined codes related to the nature of an experience (e.g., “negative”); the “location” of the experience, i.e., the relevant part of the resources (e.g., “illustration/graphics”), and suggested implication (e.g., “consider changes”). We did not anticipate differences in results between male and female students, so coding did not include gender identification. The prototyping team reviewed the coded data, flagged data entries that they did not understand, suggested changes to codes, and discussed the suggestions with the PhD fellows and their research assistants.

After agreeing with the original coders on the final codes, the three-person prototyping team sorted data entries according to the nature, implication and location, and re-reviewed them, focusing on data tagged with the implication “showstopper” or “consider changes”. New topic codes emerged during this process and were added as thematic labels of issues that needed addressing (e.g., “Time”, “Conceptual misunderstanding”, “student-computer mode”). This coding scheme evolved throughout. For an example from the dataset,⁴⁷ see the “Topics” column in the Development Cycle 2 – codes and response options. When data analysis raised important unanswered questions or resulted disagreement about interpretation, the team either contacted teacher or student networks for additional input, or adjusted interview guides to include these issues in the next development cycle.

The prototyping team drafted a description and assessment of the most important problems with the prototypes, with an initial set of ideas for solutions. The whole project team discussed these drafts, reached a consensus about which were the most important problems and brainstormed additional ideas for solutions. Based on this input, the prototyping team made the final decision about which solutions to implement.

Checking with stakeholders

Drawing on the method “member checking”,⁴⁶ we carried out “stakeholder checking”, checking our analysis and ideas with the teacher networks and curriculum developers. At the end of each development cycle, we presented descriptions of what we considered the most important problems and our proposed solutions. We asked about the accuracy of the analysis, their reactions to the proposed solutions, and any suggestions of their own. We modified solutions based on this input.

Ad hoc feedback

At different points within each development cycle, we also contacted people in the teacher and student networks for quick feedback on specific issues, for instance what to call the resources.

Figure 3 and Table 6 provide an overview of what we did in the three development cycles.

Figure 3. Overview of the three development cycles.

Ethics approval

We obtained ethics approval for the entire project from local institutional review boards and national research governing councils in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda: the Rwanda National Ethics Committee (approval number 916/RNEC/2019); Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology Institutional Ethics Review Committee and the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (approval number NACOSTI/P119/1986); and Makerere University School of Medicine Research Ethics Committee (REC REF 2020-139) and Uganda National Council of Science and Technology (HS916ES).

Designed output: the final version of “Be smart about your health” resources

The final set of resources, Be smart about your health, is an open access website for teachers comprised of ten lesson plans, a teachers’ guide, and extra resources including materials for teacher training.⁵³ Lesson plans are designed in two modes: for use in classrooms with a blackboard/flipchart (optimized for smartphone) and for classrooms with a projector with lessons formatted as downloadable Google Slides presentations. See Table 7 and Figures 4–9.

Figure 4. Final version of the “Be smart about your health” resources.

Contents include Teachers’ guide, Blackboard lesson plans, Projector lesson plans, and Extra resources.

Figure 5. Lessons designed in two modes: Blackboard mode for use in classrooms equipped with a blackboard or a flipboard, and Projector mode for use in classrooms with a projector.

Figure 6. Lesson plan content.

Each lesson plan includes an Overview, Lesson, and Background section for teachers. Each Lesson has three parts: Introduction, Activity, and Wrap-up.

Figure 7. Teachers’ guide includes: Introduction, Overview of the lessons, Using the resources, Background for teachers, Development and evaluation, and Other relevant resources.

Figure 8. Teacher training materials.

Figure 9. The examples collection provides alternative health actions or health problems/goals for each lesson or Key Concept in the resources.

Lessons plans:

Teachers’ guide: This includes an introduction to why the learning goals are important, a description of the content and how it ties to the curriculum in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, how to navigate the resources, how they were developed, and where to find other relevant resources (Figure 7).

Extra resources:

Findings from Phase 1: Groundwork

Below we describe output from the preliminary studies in Phase 1. As explained earlier, data from these studies have already been reported and discussed in other publications. However, for the reader to understand the full development process, and how these results influenced our objectives, content, and design, they are summarised below.

Analysing contexts

We organised key findings from the context analyses in four themes: motivation to teach or learn the content; capability to teach the content; capability to use digital resources; and opportunity to teach the content within existing curricula using digital resources.^39–42 Based on these findings, we identified opportunities and challenges, and made decisions about how to resolve those.

Stakeholders considered it to be important for students to learn to think critically about health, and the curricula included related learning goals. But teachers lacked capabilities and opportunities to teach both critical thinking in general, and about health choices more specifically. Additionally, schools’ digital infrastructures ranged from fully equipped with student computer labs to schools with few devices and no internet. Some of the strategies we decided to use included creating a teacher’s guide with in-depth background content and providing extra information about teaching strategies for critical thinking. We created lessons in different modes, with offline functionality to accommodate for variation in access to computers or digital infrastructure. See Table 8 for more detail about these findings and our solutions.

Prioritising IHC Key Concepts

Twelve curriculum specialists, teachers, and researchers, in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda prioritised nine of the IHC Key Concepts (Box 1) as suitable, relevant, and important for lower-secondary school students.⁵⁴ These nine concepts formed the basis for the learning goals and subsequent content development.

Identifying teaching strategies

In an overview of systematic reviews, we identified teaching strategies for helping primary and secondary school students learn to think critically.⁴⁴ We experimented with using different strategies in each lesson, but found it added too much to teachers’ and students’ procedural cognitive load. Therefore, we chose a limited set to minimize variation and used most strategies across all lessons (Box 2). Additionally, we prepared summaries of all the teaching strategies we considered using.

Collecting examples

To illustrate concepts, and make lessons more engaging, we used a broad range of examples in the lessons involving conditions and health actions that students said they found interesting.⁴⁵ We also created a searchable collection of relevant health actions and health problems or goals that can be used to illustrate key concepts, with plain language summaries of the evidence for each example (Figure 9). The examples collection is part of the “Extra resources”.

Findings from Phase 2: Development cycles

Using our findings from the Groundwork phase as a starting point, we conducted three development cycles of idea generation, prototyping, data collection and analysis, and stakeholder checking, which form the basis of this paper. The feedback was generally consistent regarding what people experienced as positive or problematic. Although there were far more positive findings, our main focus in collecting and reporting feedback was to identify problems that would require changes for the next iteration of the resources. We present the main findings thematically below.

Positive, constructive findings

Many teachers and students appreciated the learning in these lessons and experienced it as relevant both for other subjects and for their daily lives. Many students participated actively in class, including students who normally were less active. Many teachers felt the Projector mode of lessons worked best, providing structure and visual support to the lesson and helping to focus class attention. The blackboard mode and print-outs work satisfactorily for classes without projectors, or as a back-up in the event of power failure. Table 9 provides a detailed description of positive or constructive findings.

Negative findings and how we addressed them

We resolved problems as they appeared and changed the design of the prototypes dramatically from the first to the final development cycle. However, four main thematic challenges persisted throughout development: issues regarding the student-computer mode of lesson plans, Time, Comprehension, and Examples.

Tables 10-13 provide a more detailed description of challenges and solutions.

Covid-19 consequences

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our work in many ways. At times, social-distancing and travel restrictions, as well as school closures, prohibited in-person meetings and data collection and piloting. When schools reopened, teachers were pressed to make up for lost time, sometimes rushing to finish a pilot lesson or not completing it. On the other hand, the abundance of unreliable claims about Covid-19 provided timely examples and motivation.

Workarounds to challenges included communicating with stakeholders individually via audio or video call, or chat, and conducting some of interviews with home networks.

Implications

In many countries, curriculum developers are moving away from traditional knowledge-based curricula to competency-based curricula, with critical thinking among the core competencies,⁵⁷ including in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.^39–41 However, our context analyses showed that teachers lacked training and resources to teach critical thinking.^39–41

In their systematic review of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. found that three strategies were most effective, especially when combined: “the opportunity for dialogue, the exposure of students to authentic or situated problems and examples, and mentoring”.⁵⁸ Based on those findings, and findings from our overview of systematic reviews,⁴⁴ we focused on using authentic examples and discussion activities in our secondary school resources.

A review of education technology in low-income countries distinguishes between two categories of digital interventions: computer aided learning (CAL) and computer aided instruction (CAI).⁵⁹ Broadly speaking, CAL interventions are designed for the student-as-user, and either complement or supplement classroom instruction. CAI interventions, on the other hand, are designed for the teacher-as-user, and aim to enhance the quality of instruction. We developed and piloted resources for both CAL (the student-computer mode of lessons) and CAI (the blackboard and projector modes of lessons).

We found a variety of problems with the student-computer (CAL) resources. Many of the problems were logistical or technical, and not specific to our project, such as time needed to set up and charge computers, faulty or missing equipment, and unstable electricity. In addition, some curriculum developers (where student-computer resources were piloted) said that the resources lacked media-richness (such as animations or videos) as well as interactivity that we could not feasibly develop in this project and that teachers and students were possibly not experienced enough to use.

Regardless of the level of ICT preparedness, it might be that self-led study strategies and CAL interventions are not the best starting point for developing critical thinking skills, since it is more challenging to creating opportunities for dialogue when students are alone behind a screen, working at different paces from each other. In our case, developing functionality for dialogue to take place on the computer was not an option, due to technical barriers in the settings, such as lack or unreliable internet access. Computer-based mentoring^60–63 would require much more sophisticated programming than we had resources for. Moreover, less literate and less computer-literate students would be at a disadvantage. In their review, Abrami and colleagues’ found that discussion was especially effective when the teacher posed questions and there were whole-class, teacher-led discussions, or teacher-led group discussions.⁵⁸

Rwandan teachers who piloted both the student-computer and projector resources preferred the latter, with the blackboard and printed resources as a backup for when electricity failed. Besides being technically less demanding, the slides seemed to better activate students, support small and large-group discussion, and focus collective attention. Moreover, teachers can download and tailor slides. The lower-tech CAI modes require much less investment in equipment than high-tech CAL modes and could dramatically lower the threshold for bringing digital learning resources that support critical thinking into low-resource classrooms.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths of this study include comprehensive groundwork; several development cycles; including pilots of all lessons in three countries; input from a wide variety of stakeholders and participants; systematic methods used to prioritise content and identify effective teaching strategies; data collection using complementary, mixed methods; independent initial coding and analysis by more than one researcher; and stakeholder checking to triangulate analyses.

A limitation is that the project team developed the prototypes and collected and coded data. This might have biased participants to give positive feedback, or introduced bias in the analysis, leading to an exaggeration of positive feedback or lack of attention to negative feedback. We took measures to mitigate this: the interview guide included questions that explicitly encouraged participants to provide negative feedback; data was collected in three countries and coding in each country was reviewed by two researchers in order to reduce potential for bias; we introduced “stakeholder checking” to triangulate our data analyses and check that the solutions we developed were appropriate.

It is possible that the amount of data we collected placed an undue burden on participants and other stakeholders. We are exploring this in a separate stakeholder evaluation.³⁸ It is also possible that the prototypes caused harm to some students who misunderstood concepts or examples. We are exploring potential adverse effects of the final resources in process evaluations^30,31,55 and a qualitative evidence synthesis.⁵⁶

Reflexivity considerations

The core project team all have backgrounds as public health researchers, while the stakeholders recruited for the purposes of collaborating and providing feedback have mostly backgrounds in education with no previous engagement in this research topic. The core project team members are from many different settings, while all stakeholders are from East Africa with the exception of the international advisory group. The PhD fellows and several other core team members were working full-on this project, and therefore highly invested in a positive outcome, while stakeholders were participating voluntarily, in addition to their other full-time work or study commitments.

We have tried to be mindful of our differing agendas, cultural perspectives, and the ways in which the core team’s ambitions might influence the outcome of the work or place undue burden on the participants. We discussed these topics frequently during weekly core team meetings and have also explored some of these questions using more structured methods, designed as separate studies. The context analyses we conducted at the beginning of this work helped us view our research agenda from the perspective of teachers and curriculum developers and understand whether and how our research might better align with existing objectives within the three educational systems. The stakeholder engagement assessment (manuscript under development) provided stakeholders with opportunities to give us feedback about how they experienced their participation while it was ongoing. The qualitative evidence synthesis of post-trial process evaluations (manuscript under development) will help us understand if there have been any adverse effects of the resources, seen from the point of view of the participants.

Relationships between the core team and recruited stakeholders developed over time, and some people who were initially recruited as participants became engaged to the degree that they fulfilled requirements for co-authorship of this study.