Understanding students' conceptions of plant reproduction to better teach plant biology in schools

Abstract

Societal Impact Statement It is critical that people understand the importance of plants to all life on Earth, and this must be taught in an understandable and engaging way at an early age. Plant reproduction provides useful real‐life examples for teaching students about the biology of plants. However, what do students actually know about this process? We asked students to complete one of three writing tasks to ascertain their understanding of plant reproduction. Their responses provide useful insight into their conceptions of plant reproduction. Ultimately, better knowledge of students' conceptions of topics like plant reproduction can provide educators with important insights to help guide and improve teaching of plant biology in schools. Summary Teaching botany is a challenge due to the phenomenon of “plant blindness” and students' general lack of interest in plants. The reproduction of flowering plants can serve as a useful topic for teaching botany by providing a real‐life context to aid learning. However, research has shown that students have difficulties in understanding how the stages of plant reproduction are connected. This study aims to examine students' conceptions of the processes of plant reproduction. Students' conceptions were analyzed in a multi‐method approach. A total of 724 students from fifth to 12th grade (aged 10–18 years) were assessed using three different types of writing and drawing tasks. Students' conceptions were analyzed in a qualitative content analysis. Results show that students struggle to differentiate between pollination and seed dispersal. Moreover, students have better knowledge about the function of seeds than about the function of pollen. Students are most familiar with seed dispersal by wind and pollination by bees. Better knowledge of students' conceptions can greatly aid teaching. Students' awareness of the function of seeds can be used as a starting point for teaching plant reproduction. The writing and drawing tasks of the study can be used in class to assess students' conceptions in an easy way to make conceptions and their development visible to both students and teachers. Knowledge about students' conceptions of plant reproduction can serve as a basis for deeper understanding and improve how plant biology is taught in schools.

Plants to the fore: Noticing plants in designed environments

“…In addition, the argument put forward by Sanders (2019), that the apparent "slowness" of plants could be one reason for not noticing them, might also be a factor. This mirrors much of the research work in educational science that concerns questions of preference for animals or plants (e.g., Wandersee, 1986;Kinchin, 1999); student responses to diverse plant education interventions (e.g., Lindemann-Mathies, 2005;Fančovičová, & Prokop, 2011;Nyberg & Sanders, 2014;Krosnick, Baker, & Moore, 2018;Pany et al, 2019); student reactions to specific plant displays in botanic gardens (e.g., Tunnicliffe, 2001;Sanders, 2007); considerations of plants in science curricula content (e.g., Hershey, 2002;Galbraith, 2003;Ebert-May & Holt, 2014); and the relatively few visual cognition studies concerned with plants (e.g., Schussler and Olzak, 2008;Balas & Momsen, 2014). Furthermore, a large body of educational research has concerned itself with the identification of plants and the perceived connections between knowledge of, and attitudes to, plants (e.g., Bebbington, 2005;Frisch, Unwin, & Saunders, 2010).…”

Gardens as Science Learning Contexts Across Educational Stages: Learning Assessment Based on Students’ Graphic Representations

“…Attention has been paid in the field to the use of botanical gardens for this purpose (Sanders, 2007), and it seems evident that gardens can be incorporated into schools, offering regular experiences of contact, growing, observation, caring, and experimentation with plants, and, particularly, with plants that are significant to us, as they provide us with food. It is important to reflect on what strategies to use: for instance, to use students' interests (Lampert et al, 2019) to trigger affective and meaningful experiences. Drawing may be incorporated both to promote the construction of scientific concepts and to assess them (Eisner, 2004;Sanders, 2007;Anderson et al, 2014).…”

Students’ conceptions of plant reproduction processes This paper was presented at the ERIDOB conference 2020

“…The preliminary tasks were tested with four students using think-aloud protocols (Konrad 2010), and further tested in five classes to see how students responded to the tasks. Three open-ended writing tasks were selected after this testing phase (Lampert et al 2019).…”