In the last number of decades, there has been a revolution in the field of biological research. Genomics and its related technologies have the potential to become one of the most important scientific and technological revolutions of the 21^st century (Kirkpatrick et al., 2002). This fast development of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering had led to a huge gap between what the scientific community understands as risk and reward, and what it means to society. In order to involve society in the decision-making process about scientific policies, we need well-informed citizens who are able to make thoughtful decisions based on scientific conclusions combined with ethical and moral considerations.

During last number of years, interest in the biotechnological literacy of society has increased among science education researchers. These studies aim to understand what should be in the science curriculum to promote scientific (biotechnological) literacy. To achieve this purpose, studies assessed teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards different aspects of biotechnology, including previous knowledge, fears, beliefs, and ethics related to the use of these new technologies. Interestingly, it has been shown that attitudes affect science teacher’s behavior and influence how well teachers would approach good science teaching in schools (Klop and Severiens, 2007).

In the case of Spain, data related to Spaniards attitudes towards biotechnology come from socio-economic studies (Pardo et al., 2002), economical surveys on GM Food products and only one study was focused on high school students (Sáez et al., 2008). There is no publication devoted to the attitude’s assessment towards biotechnology of Spaniards university students corresponding to elementary education pre-service teachers. This last scope is the purpose of our study.

This study aims to analyse Spanish elementary education pre-service teachers in two aspects, (i) their knowledge level of genetic and biotechnological basis and (ii) their attitudes towards biotechnology. Additionally, socio-demographic data was collected in order to identify any possible correlation between specific attitudes and socio-demographic variables.

Bibliography Kirkpatrick, G., Orvis, K. & Pittendrigh, B. (2002):”GAME: A teaching model for biotechnology”. Journal of Biological Education, 37(1), 31-35. Klop, T. i Severiens, S. (2007). An exploration of attitudes towards modern biotechnology: a study among Dutch secondary school students. International Journal of Science Education, 29(5), 663-679. Pardo, R., Midden, C and Miller, J. (2002). Attitudes towards biotechnology in the European Union. Journal of Biotechnology, 98(1), 9-34 Sáez, M.J., Gómez Niño, A., Carretero A. (2008): Matching Society Values: Students’ views of biotechnology. International Journal of Science Education, 30(2), 167-183