FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERCEPTIONS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS TOWARDS BIOTECHNOLOGY

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service teachers biotechnology knowledge and attitudes, the effects of gender and subject area on their biotechnology knowledge and attitudes, as well as how their perceptions about biotechnology are related to pre-service teachers cognitive, affective and behavioural attitudinal dimensions. Data were gathered by administration of two biotechnology knowledge and attitudes questionnaires to a group of 323 pre-service teachers in 3 universities in Turkey. The results of this study indicated that both biology majors and non-majors had poor understanding of biotechnology. In addition, attitude scores of pre-service teachers who took biology courses in teacher education programs were significantly higher than pre-service teachers who were not involved in the biology course. It was found that gender had a significant impact on attitudes towards biotechnology, while subject area did not have effect on attitudes. It was also found that 91% of variance of biotechnology knowledge and attitude scores can be accounted for by the linear combination of affective, cognitive and behavioural attitude dimensions. Implications for teaching science are discussed.