PRESERVICE CLASSROOM TEACHERS’ BIOETHICAL PERCEPTIONS

Year 2016, Volume: 4 , 573 - 578, 01.09.2016

Gülbin Özkan Ünsal Umdu Topsakal

Abstract

Recent
developments in biology and biotechnology have raised ethical issues. In order
to live in more ethical world, it is most important to improve preservice
teachers' capacity to make ethical decisions. The purpose of this research was
to determine preservice classroom teachers’ perceptions about bioethical
issues. The research was conducted with 40 preservice class teachers (35
females, 5 males) from Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Education,
Department of Classroom Education in 2015-2016 academic year. In this study qualitative research method
was used. For this purpose four bioethics scenarios was developed by the
researchers and applied. The
participants wrote their decisions about each scenario that included bioethical
issues. The data was treated by qualitative data analysis - open coding. As a
consequence of this research, it has been revealed that classroom teachers have
decided mostly by their beliefs such as religious rather than bioethical
perspective. At the end of the research, some suggestions were made concerning
to have bioethics subjects in lessons, and to arrange preservice education for
classroom teachers.

Keywords

Bioethics, bioethical issues, biotechnology, preservice teachers

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