Conocimientos, actitudes e intereses de estudiantes de educación secundaria obligatoria y bachillerato hacia la biotecnología

Resumen

Biotechnology is an area of science with many applications in different fields (medical, nutritional, environmental, industrial ...) that generate goods and services that the human being uses, but that are sometimes related to socio-scientific controversies. High school students must acquire during their period of formal education, knowledge that allows them to understand the science around them, that is, a scientific and technological literacy. But they should not only acquire knowledge, but also skills such as argumentation, that help them to express and adequately discuss their attitude or decision in certain situations related to science. OBJECTIVES The main objectives of this work are four: to know what knowledge students who are finishing the ESO have about genetics; what are the knowledge of the students of 1st Baccalaureate on genetics and the applications of biotechnology and how they are related; and what are the knowledge, attitudes and interests of the students of 2nd Baccalaureate on biotechnology, as well as the determination of the correlation between the two. Finally, the fourth objective is to study how students argue their views on biotechnology and how they use the knowledge and attitudes previously determined. METHODOLOGY For the first three objectives of the research, three different questionnaires have been used, developed for the different purposes of the research, and which were administered to a sample of students in 4th ESO, 1st Baccalaureate and 2nd Baccalaureate. The analysis of the questionnaires was carried out using both qualitative and quantitative strategies, but the latter predominant, with statistical analysis based on the SPSS program. For the ultimate objective of the research, four semi-structured interviews on different areas of biotechnology were designed and administered to 20 students of 2nd Baccalaureate. The analysis of the results of this last part was carried out qualitatively, using the Atlas.Ti program. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS 4th grade students have ideas about some notions related to Biological Inheritance, despite not having studied them before. These points of view could be constructed by extracurricular influences and some knowledge developed in the educational field (the cell, for example). Although some of these ideas coincide with the correct ones, many move away from scientific thinking and most remain after the teaching of these contents. In 1st of Baccalaureate, there is basic knowledge about genetics to be able to understand at elementary level the applications of biotechnology, which are improvable. In addition, in this area, students show little knowledge (in terms of the number of applications they are able to identify and also, the nature of them, even those most socially disclosed). On the other hand, secondary schools with better knowledge of genetics and biotechnology applications do not always coincide. The students of 2nd of Baccalaureate know some biotechnological applications, but they still have important errors that show that there are concepts that do not transfer from the learning in genetics that they have previously done, to biotechnology, which will make it difficult for them to deepen the biotechnological applications beyond to cite the typical examples that are usually presented in textbooks. With regard to attitudes, we emphasize that these will depend not only on their application and purpose, but also on the type of organism involved. The students in our sample are not too informed about biotechnology through the media, but they believe it will be useful in the future. Finally, although it seems that there is a correlation, it is enormously complex to determine the relationships between knowledge, attitude and interest because they are multidimensional constructs, determined by cognitive, affective and behavioral factors. As for the argument in biotechnology, the number of times in which students contribute arguments for and against showing the contrast and contrast of ideas to finally position themselves in a certain way is very small. On the contrary, it seems that a student's decision is usually associated with a single justification (pro or contra), cognitive or attitudinal, or both (sometimes they use one, but they imply the other).