Benefits of Hands-On Biotechnology Training Workshops for Secondary School Educators and College Students (original) (raw)

This paper is based on a project that evaluated the benefits of biotechnology training workshops for its integration into school curriculum that is dependent on teachers' knowledge, their teaching confidence, as well as their opinion towards biotechnology. Teachers, as well as a parallel group comprising of college students, were given pre-and post-training tests to assess changes in their knowledge and opinion about biotechnology. Participant teachers' confidence in teaching biotechnology was also assessed. These evaluations revealed a significant increase in the post-test scores compared to the pre-test for teachers (df = 22, t= 12.706, p<0.0001) and college students (df= 12, t= 5.584, p<0.0001). In addition, the teachers (df= 39, t= 8.078, p<0.0001) as well as the college students (df= 7, t= 4.174, p=0.0042) registered a significant increase in their positive attitude towards biotechnology after the training workshops. Biotechnology teaching confidence of the participant educators also showed a significant increase (df= 35, t= 6.393, p<.0001) after the workshops. However, urban teachers had a significantly greater (df= 34, t=-3.191, p=0.0030) gain of 0.376 in their post-training teaching confidence compared to the 0.145 gain by their rural counterparts. Additionally, a statistically significant (r= 0.868, r-squared= 0.7534, p= .0219) relationship was found between teaching confidence and positive opinion of the teachers regarding biotechnology. Since teachers' pedagogical approach and adoption of biotechnology curriculum is dependent on the above issues, results presented in this study are important for designing future biotechnology training workshops.