EMOTIONS EXPRESSED TOWARD GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AND PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Active student-centered instructional methods bring more emotion into science teaching, especially in the case of socioscientific issues, like research on and usage of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We tested the strength of ten basic emotions (fear, anger, joy, disgust, sadness, shame, contempt, guilt, surprise and interest) toward different GMOs. Students expressed high levels of interest, surprise and joy towards GMOs, emotions that could be used as possible motivators to raise the level of interest in Science. Students do not express an equal level of negative emotions toward GMOs as a general category, but take a standpoint towards each item or practice separately. Knowing this, the teacher can choose list of GMOs ranked from more acceptable to the least acceptable GMOs, to avoid any obstruction of reasoning toward GMOs based on strong negative emotions.