Factors influencing secondary students’ attitudes towards biotechnology: a review of the literature

Abstract

With the importance of Biotechnology in everyday life increasing, it is imperative that the scientific community continues to explore students’ attitudes to key biotechnology aspects. Secondary school students will become future citizens on whose lives biotechnology will have an impact. This study represents a first attempt at a review of existing literature on secondary students’ attitudes towards biotechnology in the last 20 years (1990-2010). Such a review is timely and useful to science educators and designers of science education curricula, given the recent rapid scientific development in this field and its potentially major societal impacts.Τhe goals of this literature review was to examine past research in order to identify the factors influencing the formation of secondary students’ attitudes towards biotechnology. Five main factors were identified as influencing the formation of secondary students’ attitudes towards biotechnology: 1) age, 2) gender, 3) life form receiving the biotechnology application, 4) different application types and purpose of biotechnology and 5) knowledge. An overview of these factors is provided in this summary, along with a discussion on the educational implications of this review.