Arab Educational Information Network

This study aims at investigating students’ understanding level of medical, applied health sciences, pharmacy, nurse and science faculties for controversial biotechnological issues in the official Jordanian universities. Four hundred students from the 3rd and 4th year of the five faculties (eighty students from each college) were enrolled in this study. Students were asked to answer a test which comprised of 24 multiple choice questions each having four choices with a single correct answer. Single variant ANOVA and One Sample T-Test tests were used to analyze the results. The average for all students was 13.56 which was over the level estimated by experts (12). Also, the results showed that the level of students’ understanding in biology was over all other students levels in other disciplines (medicine, applied health sciences, nursing and pharmacy) for controversial biotechnological issues, no statistically significant differences between the level of students’ understanding in the medicine, nurse and pharmacy for controversial biotechnological issues, and the low understanding level of students in applied health sciences for controversial biotechnological issues compared to the levels of all students in other disciplines. It is recommended that the controversial scientific and ethical issues should be included in the curricula of all disciplines in the university plans for the various disciplines in scientific and medical faculties, and to develop teaching strategies suitable for this purpose. (Published abstract)