THE AWARENESS OF STUDENTS' BIOETHICS

Abstract

There are many different developments about bioethics with the changing technology. These developments in society pose dilemmas about how to make a decision. Day by day there are emerging new things so people deal with situations which they have never met. Also these developments must be transferred to the field of Education. Science curriculum is prepared according to science-society-environment; also bioethics subjects are important for science education because they are related with society and science. Students mostly encounter new problems and these cause to dilemmas. They should solve the dilemmas and make decisions. Therefore purpose of this paper is to find out primary education students' awareness of bioethics subjects. This study is a research that deals with 7th grade students. The sample of the study is 23 students (10 male and 13 female). The data of the study were obtained in 2015. In this study qualitative research method is used. A survey instrument that includes 8 open-ended questions was applied to see students' knowledge about bioethics. The data was treated by qualitative data analysis - open coding. According to students' answers in the test, most of them do not know anything about bioethics subjects, so they have lack of knowledge about this topic. Bioethics subjects should be included in the science curriculum because nowadays biological and technological developments require having ideas about these subjects. The topics of bioethics attract students' interest and they wonder about the topics. Students want to learn the topics at the scenarios because in their future life they will encounter these situations.