Genetics Literacy: Insights From Science Teachers' Knowledge, Attitude, and Teaching Perceptions

Date

2018-10-01

Author

Cebesoy, Ümran Betül
Öztekin, Ceren

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

169
views

0
downloads

Teachers have a crucial role to play in raising future generations of citizens who are aware of issues in genetics literacy such as gene therapy, cloning, and stem cell research. Teachers' teaching practices are influenced by their knowledge in genetics literacy and their attitudes towards different issues. Accordingly, this study explored the relationships among middle school science teachers' background characteristics (gender, teaching experience, self-perceived interest in and self-perceived knowledge of genetics), their genetics literacy levels, their attitudes towards various issues in genetics literacy, and their perceptions of teaching issues in genetics literacy. Data were collected from 435 Turkish middle school science teachers by completing the Genetics Literacy Assessment Inventory, the scale for attitudes towards issues in genetics literacy and perceptions of teaching issues in genetics literacy. The results of canonical correlation analysis suggested that being female, having a high level of interest in genetics, and perceiving oneself as knowledgeable in genetics were associated with higher levels of knowledge in genetics literacy and holding favorable general attitudes. These teachers believed in the necessity of introducing genetics literacy and held higher self-efficacy teaching beliefs regarding the teaching of issues in genetics literacy in their classes. However, they tended to emphasize more impeding factors as well as hold unfavorable attitudes towards gene therapy and gene therapy applications, implying that their attitudes were context dependent.

Subject Keywords

Attitudes, Genetics literacy, Science teachers, Teaching perceptions

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/43662

Journal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-017-9840-4

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Pre-service science teachers' genetic literacy level and attitudes towards genetics Cebesoy, Umran Betul; Öztekin, Ceren (2011-10-30) The aim of this study is to determine pre-service science teachers' genetic literacy level and their attitude towards genetics. The Genetics Literacy Assessment Instrument (GLAI; Bowling et al., 2008) and the Genetics Attitude Scale (see Acra, 2003) were used to collect relevant data. Pre-service science teachers held quite favorable attitude towards genetics (M=3.75) while they had a relatively low level of genetic literacy (M=15.39). Their knowledge levels with respect to dimensions of the GLAI varied. Fo...
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG TURKISH PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS' GENETICS LITERACY LEVELS AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS ISSUES IN GENETICS LITERACY Cebesoy, Ümran Betül; Öztekin, Ceren (2016-01-01) The importance of genetically literate individuals who can understand and join debates about genetics related issues, including gene therapy or cloning has been acknowledged by societies. With this respect, raising genetically literate individuals has become more prominent. Teachers' knowledge in genetics literacy and their attitudes towards issues in genetics literacy influence their teaching practices. As a wide range of variables effect teachers' genetics literacy levels and attitudes, this study examine...
Development of a genetic material transfer approach for gene therapy Ayaz, Şerife; Hasırcı, Vasıf Nejat; Department of Biotechnology (2005) This thesis is focused on the development of a gene delivery system, especially for the purpose of DNA vaccination. DNA expression vectors have the potential to be useful therapeutics for a wide variety of applications. A carrier system was designed to realize the delivery of genes to cells and the promotion of controlled adequate expression in the target cells. The low gene delivery efficiency observed with systems composed of polyplexes is mainly due to low stability of polycation e.g polyethylenimine-DNA...
Developing effective socioscientific issues teaching practices through educational design research Irmak, Meltem; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül; Yürük, Nejla; Department of Elementary Education (2018) The main purpose of this study was to develop pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) effective socioscientific issues (SSI) teaching practices with technology by activating their metacognition. For this purpose, educational design research was utilized to re-design an undergraduate course. Re-designed course was implemented in the fall semester of 2014-2015 with 36 participants. In light of the results of the data obtained in the first implementation, expert reviews and the related literature, the design of t...
Cloning and characterization of industrially important alpha-galactosidase genes from the human pathogen aspergillus fumigatus Söyler, U. Betül; Ögel, Zümrüt Begüm; Department of Food Engineering (2004) In this study, molecular cloning studies were performed on the a-galactosidase genes of Aspergillus fumigatus IMI 385708. This organism is an opportunistic saprophytic fungus and a human pathogen, mainly affecting immunocompromised patients. A. fumigatus is a thermotolerant fungus and can efficiently produce thermostable a-galactosidase. Two different cloning strategies were undertaken in this study. A. fumigatus cDNA library, prepared previously, was screened with three different probes. No net results wer...

Citation Formats

Ü. B. Cebesoy and C. Öztekin, “Genetics Literacy: Insights From Science Teachers’ Knowledge, Attitude, and Teaching Perceptions,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION, pp. 1247–1268, 2018, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/43662.