PRE-SERVICE BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ REPORTED FEAR AND DISGUST OF ANIMALS AND THEIR WILLINGNESS TO INCORPORATE LIVE ANIMALS INTO THEIR TEACHING THROUGH STUDY YEARS

Attitudes toward animals are influenced by human-animal interactions and range from positive to negative. Direct experiences with animals are a positive predictor of the strength of attitudes (Špur, Pokorny, & Šorgo, 2016) and direct contact in general changes people’s attitudes (Bjerke, Østdahl, & Kleiven, 2003; Tomažič, 2011b; Wagler, 2010; Wagler & Wagler, 2011). Attitudes are more powerful if they are related to our evolutionary past (Herzog & Burghardt, 1988) as well as by the direct benefits one gets from the economic value of certain animals (Serpell, 2004). However, one must consider that attitudes toward different species of animals that are feared and disliked cannot be easily reversed from negative to positive (Kaltenborn, Bjerke, Nyahongo, & Williams, 2006). American psychologist Plutchik (1991) defined two groups of emotions: basic and complex. Expressed fear of animals mostly functions as a response to the perceived or immediate threat of physical injury (Davey, McDonald, Hirisave et al., 1998), while disgust toward animals may act as a protective agent against possible contamination (Davey, Cavanagh, & Lamb, 2003; Prokop & Fančovičová, 2013; Prokop, Medina Jerez, Coleman, Fančovičová, Özel, & Fedor, 2016). In some cases, fear may act as a reinforcing mechanism for disgust and disgust may also act as a reinforcing mechanism of fear (Woody & Techman, 2000). For example, in regards to the fear of spiders, disgust is supposed to have a secondary influence to fear, acting as a reinforcing agent (Sawchuk, Lohr, Westendorf, Meunier, & Tolin, 2002). Davey et al. (1998) conducted an international research on the fear of animals categorizing animals into three groups: ‘fear-relevant’ (fierce animals that can cause physical injury and pain e.g., wolves, lions, bears); ‘disgust-relevant’ (associated with spread of disease, infection or contamination of food sources, or possessing features that resemble disgust-evoking stimuli e.g., slimy animals); and ‘fear-irrelevant’ animals (that generally do not evoke fear reactions e.g., companion or domesticated animals such as a cat, a hamster, a rabbit, or a cow). Similarly, Tomažič (2011a), conducted a Iztok Tomažič, Nina Pihler, Jelka Strgar University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Abstract. In this research, the self-reported fear and disgust toward animals of preservice biology teachers and their willingness to incorporate live animals into their teaching were assessed with a questionnaire. An entire generation of pre-service biology teachers (N = 128) participated in this research. The results show that students are mostly afraid of animals that are potentially dangerous to humans such as large predators and are disgusted mostly by animals that are small and wet looking, like a slug. The students were less willing to incorporate animals that they reported to be most fearful or disgusting into their teaching. Considering that throughout their study years, there was practically no change in students’ levels of fear, disgust and willingness to incorporate live animals into their teaching calls for an improvement of the biology teacher education study programme in order to train teachers that are skilled and willing to use live animals in their teaching. One of the solutions could be offering pre-service teachers as many first-hand experiences with live animals as possible either in a formal learning environment, such as the university or, in case of large animals (predators), in informal learning environments, like a zoo or a national park.