[[alternative]]The Preservice Teacher's Knowledge and Attitude to Bioethics Education

[[abstract]]Abstract This study advocates for the value of including bioethics education in science education, and suggests inclusion of knowledge, value, and methodology in the content of bioethics education. This empirical study applied the judgmental sampling method to collect survey data from 404 elementary and high school pre-service teachers from the metropolitan Taipei area. The measurement used was the "Bioethics Education Questionnaire" developed for this study. This questionnaire is designed to investigate the pre-service teachers' recognitions of bio-technology, their attitudes toward bioethical issues, and their opinions toward bioethics education. The results of this study indicated that the term "bioethics education" has different images for different pre-service teachers. Moreover, bio-technology was shown to have high social relevance, and different bio-technologies have different levels of impact on social ethics. In terms of their attitudes, most of the pre-services teachers partially (conditionally) support the bio-technology. However, whether they are personally involved in such a technology has a significant impact on their attitudes toward bio-technology. In addition, their attitudes also vary depending upon the objects and species under gene manipulation. In terms of their opinion toward bioethics education, most of the pre-service teachers indicated that they are willing to teach such a subject. They agreed that it is an important subject which should be taught and that it is highly possible to develop such a curriculum. They also agreed that the content areas should include the ethical conflicts caused by bio-technology, the ability to make ethical decisions when faced with such conflicts, and the ability to make decisions balancing individual beliefs and societal rules. In addition, the method of teaching should be incorporative and should be included in the curriculum of different grade levels. Although bioethics education has the most relevance within the subject of high school biology, it can also be taught across different subjects, different content areas, using different information resources, and applying different teaching methods. This study also indicated that the participants' gender, the universities they enrolled in, and different areas of study, all have significant impacts on the results of this study. For example, the pre-service teachers who are majoring in biology have more knowledge of bio-technology and have clearer attitudes toward the impacts of bio-technology on social ethics. They are also more motivated in teaching bioethics, and more able to gather relevant teaching materials from various resources. The conclusions and suggestions of this study not only can serve as the basic structure for the future bioethics education curriculum, but also can serve as an useful consultation tool for teachers who are interested in bioethics education.