Western Australian high school students' attitudes towards biotechnology processes

Abstract

This study reports on the attitudes towards biotechnology of 905, 1,5 -16 year-old students from 11 Western Australian schools. Students were asked to read 15 statements about biotechnology processes and to draw a line to separate what they considered 'acceptable' statements from those they considered 'unacceptable'. Overall, the students hold a wide range of beliefs about what is an acceptable use of biotechnology. Their attitudes range from those of the 55 (6.0%) students who do not agree with the use of any living organisms in biotechnology to the 125 (14%) students who approve of all the stated uses of biotechnology, with a wide spread in between. Acceptance of the use of organisms in biotechnology decreases as we move from microorganisms (>90%approval) to plants (71 -82%) to humans (42 -45%) and animals (34 -40%). The attitudes of 99 students who recently studied biotechnology and have a good understanding of the processes and issues were similar in percentage and spread to those who were less informed.

High school and university students' knowledge and attitudes regarding biotechnology

“…But, other research reports from the Europe are more similar to those found in the present study maybe due to the more conservative policy of the European Union toward biotechnologies [23]. For example, we found that attitudes toward GM plants or microorganisms are more liberal than those of animals which support findings of other studies [9,11]. We propose that negative views of manipulations with animals are directly related to poor knowledge of how genetic manipulations take place, because about 40% of all students did not know that genetic modification is not painful to animals.…”

“…Little effects of educational level on attitudes toward biotechnology was also observed in the findings of similar studies carried out by Dawson and Schibeci [11] with Australian sample, and by Chen and Raffan's [4] with UK and Taiwan sample. The significant correlation between subdimensions of attitudes and knowledge found in our study indicated that higher level of knowledge about biotechnology would result in more positive attitudes [4,27].…”

“…Current attitudes to biotechnology in Turkey are not favorable toward shopping of genetically engineered products and this should be of interest for future food policy in Turkey. More biotechnology information sources, such as Biotechnology Online (www.biotechnology.gov.au) in Australia [11] or www.gmo.sk in Slovakia, may help researchers in their research and teachers in their teaching about genetic engineering more effectively. Science and biology teachers' preparedness for teaching biotechnology should not be neglected, but further investigation in this topic is needed.…”

“…Approximately one-third of the students turned out to have little or no understanding of biotechnology, and one-third was unable to give a single example of biotechnology. In another study Dawson and Schibeci [11] reported 905 15-to 16-year-old high school students' attitudes toward biotechnology processes. Their results showed that the students hold a wide range of beliefs about what an acceptable use of biotechnology was.…”

Elementary education preservice teachers' understanding of biotechnology and its related processes

“…Furthermore, these studies have been conducted in a limited number of countries, particularly Australia [7,[11][12][13], England and Taiwan [14], Netherlands [9], and Slovakia [10]. Regardless of the location, however, these studies report that students have very limited knowledge of biotechnology and its related processes.…”