SAFETY AND PROTECTION DURING AN EARTHQUAKE: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF K-12 TRADE BOOKS

An earthquake is one of the most important and complex natural hazards that humanity continues to face. In the United States alone, over 140 million people live in earthquake-prone areas, with one-third of this risk on the West Coast. Earthquake education has become increasingly important at a time when many countries are making earthquake early warning (EEW), such as the ShakeAlert^® system for the west coast of the United States, part of their integrated efforts to mitigate risk. Despite advances in the construction of educational materials, interventions, and technologies, and their increasing ubiquity, K-12 trade books obtained through public and school libraries for free continue to be a major resource for science education. In this study, we conduct a qualitative content analysis on the representations of earthquake safety and protective actions in 47 trade books purposively selected from five metropolitan libraries in the United States. Only three of these trade books offer information around EEW systems. Using a deductive and inductive analytical framework, we coded the books to generate three main categories of earthquake preparedness, protection, and recovery. First, preparedness refers to safety measures to take before an earthquake to minimize impact, including structural and urban planning solutions, creating community connections, and household supply plans. Second, protective action refers to measures to take during an earthquake. This category emphasizes both human, automated, and affective actions that can be done to seek physical and emotional protection during earthquakes. The third category captures recovery, which refers to activities that can be done to bring a sense of normalcy after an earthquake, including damage evaluation and control, and community support. The trade books provide both accurate knowledge and alternate conceptions. We delineate the alternate conceptions to bring awareness to these issues, such that we can offer scaffolds on which to design and improve effective resources for earthquake education, and provide pathways to incorporate knowledge about EEW systems into more trade books in the future.