The use of newspapers as an educational tool in teaching socioscientific issues in biology education

Rapid developments in biological sciences such as genetic engineering and biotechnology affect our life very closely. While these developments affecting our lives are solutions to some of our problems, they also bring different ethical discussions. In addition to providing students with knowledge of the subject, ethical education processes, in which the social reflections of these gains are discussed, have become imperative. In this study, newspaper articles were used in the processing of topics that contain ethical dilemmas such as GMO within the scope of bioethics education. The selected newspaper articles were used in the learning process based on the model for bioethics education introduced by Smith (1992). The effect of the bioethics education process on the success and attitude of the students was examined with newspapers. In this context, the newspapers are considered as an important educational material with their features such as both containing up-to-date information and providing students with a learning environment outside the classroom environment. The internet archives of high circulation newspapers in the national press were scanned and newspaper news about GMO were reached and selected. The application was made with a total of 155 11th grade students of three state high schools located in the borders of Ankara. In the research, knowledge test prepared on related topics and biology attitude scale were applied as pre-test and post-test. In addition, open-ended student opinion form, individual interview questions and students' opinions about the process were taken.