Using students’ interest in useful plants to encourage plant vision in the classroom

Abstract

Societal Impact StatementThe phenomenon known as “plant blindness” leads to a restricted view on nature, which may in turn result in people and society having less understanding of important environmental and conservation issues. Biology educators must tackle this problem directly. By exploring students’ interests in useful plants (spice plants and stimulant herbal drugs), we present a route by which educators could counteract plant blindness by taking students’ plant‐related interests into account when preparing a teaching unit. We reveal that educators must carefully select the plant materials used as examples in the classroom to effectively encourage plant vision in students. Summary The term “plant blindness” describes the phenomenon that many people tend to overlook plants in their everyday life. Therefore, they often do not understand key biological concepts to their full extent and may develop a more restricted view of nature. Here, we provide a possible method of counteracting plant blindness in schools by capitalizing on students’ interest in useful plants to impart botanical content in biology lessons. We investigated 172 students aged 10–18 years old in order to explore the links between students’ individual interests in spice plants and stimulant herbal drugs and their situational interest during an inquiry‐based botany teaching unit by using a questionnaire and additional semi‐structured interviews. Data analysis shows that, for students with low and medium individual interest, stimulant herbal drugs and spice plants can be used to generate higher situational interest. Furthermore, students with initially high individual interest should get the opportunity to follow their own questions concerning a plant group before working on a structured learning task. Using study objects from different subgroups of useful plants for introducing botanical content in biology lessons, and giving highly interested students time and space to follow their own interests, seems to be a promising way to counteract plant blindness and, thus, to help enable students to develop a more comprehensive view of nature.