Abstract:

Nowadays, antibiotic resistance is a growing problem worldwide. Among other preventive measures, it is important to use them with caution and to take actions in order to reduce the spread of infection. However, studies revealed that, in general, people are not aware of these problems. Indeed, it was demonstrated that Portuguese population show an even greater lack of knowledge concerning some parameters, when compared with the European knowledge mean. Regarding Eurobarometer about antimicrobial resistance, 64% of Portuguese population erroneously believed that antibiotics kill viruses and 55% believed that they are effective against colds. Also, only a minority revealed to have had received information about this issue. Having this in mind, it is considered to be crucial to implement educational interventions concerning the use of antibiotics, hygiene and prevention of infections. These are even more relevant at early ages, given the greater probability for the implementation of the developed good habits in the future. With the pandemic situation that we all face, the need to deal with this subject became even more evident.

Given that textbooks are a fundamental resource for teachers and baring the above stated in mind, we intended to evaluate how Portuguese primary textbooks deal with this subject. From literature review, we have established categories and subcategories of analysis and developed a checklist to perform textbooks analysis. In this regard, we analysed 12 textbooks of the four school years of primary education (3 textbooks per school year), in terms of the information provided concerning the following:
(i) microorganisms;
(ii) hand washing;
(iii) the use of antibiotics;
(iv) the precautions to take when coughing and sneezing.

From the results, it was verified that little attention is given to this subject. In fact, from the twelve analysed textbooks, only one presents a small description of what microorganisms are and four made short references to them. Also, references to the relevance of washing hands could only be found in seven textbooks, where such topic is addressed in a poorly manner. Although some references to vaccines were made, no references to antibiotics and to the precautions to take when using them could be found. Moreover, there are no references made to the precautions to take when coughing and sneezing.

With these results, authors considered that textbooks should give more attention to this subject, for students to develop a better knowledge and to develop a healthier and responsible attitude. Also, it would be relevant to perform further research to understand how teachers value this subject and what kind of additional material teachers use to address it.

Keywords:

Primary education, Health promotion, Hygiene, Prevention of infection, Textbooks.