INVESTIGATION OF PRESERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS GENETIC LITERACY ISSUES AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

This survey study aims to investigate the attitudes of pre-service science teachers towards genetic literacy subjects and biotechnology. participants consisted of 703 (567 female, 136 male) pre-service science teachers studying in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th years of the department of elementary science education at four state universities in the aegean region in the 2018-2019 academic year. the data was collected with the biotechnology attitude scale developed by öcal (2012) and attitude scale towards genetic literacy issues, the items used in the british social attitude survey (2000) and the wellcome trust consultive panel on gene therapy (1999) scales (sturgis et al., 2005) and adapted into turkish by cebesoy (2014). the attitudes of pre-service science teachers’ towards biotechnology and genetics literacy were analyzed by using pasw 20 package program. results showed that there was a significant difference in pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards biotechnology with respect to gender, and class level, but their attitudes towards genetics literacy topics do not change with respect to these variables.