Meeting Abstract
57.3 Saturday, Jan. 5 High School Biology Teachers� Confidence in Biotechnology HANEGAN, Nikki L*; MANSIUS, Amber; Brigham Young University; Brigham Young University nikkihanegan@byu.edu
Project Crawfish is a collaborative university and secondary school partnership to enhance the use of biotechnology in high school settings. Teachers are becoming more aware of the importance of biotechnology, as it is quickly changing biology (Braun, 2002; Colavito, 1999; Harms, 2002; Sohan, Waliczek & Briers, 2002). However teachers are faced with many challenges and barriers in implementing biotechnology into their classrooms. These challenges stem from a lack of content knowledge, which leads to a decrease in confidence levels while teaching. Leslie & Schibeci (2006) discovered that if more resources were available such as a package of materials for immediate use and online resources, teachers were more willing to implement biotechnology. But many teachers have not had experience using biotechnology equipment and the more experienced teachers do not want to take the time to fit biotechnology into an already established curriculum. Younger teachers who were exposed to biotechnology in their education have been found to put forth more effort to teach their students biotechnology (Braun & Moses, 2004). This paper examines experienced high school teacher attitudes toward biotechnology, their confidence levels with both doing and teaching biotechnology, and the extent of implementation into the classroom. A survey was designed and administered to secondary biology teachers using a Likert scale and included three sections: 1) teacher background information, 2) experience with biotechnology equipment, and 3) incorporation in the curriculum. The findings reveal low confidence levels in both doing and teaching biotechnology as well as low implementation levels. The resulting need is more biotechnology professional development programs for teachers to increase confidence levels in both content knowledge and skills.
