It is critical to develop students' science communication skills as they progress through their education. One way this goal can be accomplished is by integrating Flip into educational programs. Through Flip educators create prompts that students respond to in video form, which leads to deeper discussion on various topics. This brief will share an…

Although formulating a broadly accepted definition of scientific literacy may be challenging, it is widely recognized that Nature of Science (NOS) is an essential component of it. There are different ways to define NOS. In some cases, NOS can be conceptualized through a number of general NOS aspects like for instance science's empirical basis or…

Traditional phenotyping methods are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and often destructive measurements that describe plant traits. Technology allows the advancement of sensor-based phenotype data to be collected digitally. This area of work is called high-throughput phenotyping (HTP). HTP is rapid, non-destructive, and non-invasive. The effective…

We used a novel approach that combined direct PCR of plant tissue and SRAP DNA fingerprinting to seek to identify the crosses made in "Brassica rapa" used in the Wisconsin Fast Plants. Our goal was to develop a rapid method for students to use in a biology, botany, or genetics class to identify the parental types (purple stem, non-purple…

Plant extracts and their components have been reported to have antimicrobial properties against phytopathogens. Although such properties could be harnessed for the development of new pathogen control strategies, there are no standardised methods for their assessment in different extracts. The laboratory exercise presented here involves the use of…

The research base on students' knowledge of plants has established that misunderstandings develop in the early years of formal education and can persist through middle, secondary, and tertiary education. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that a lack of emphasis on teaching biology from an organismic perspective helps explain the range…

Environmental education (EE) is a concern in modern society. Plant blindness and nature-deficit disorder highlight how important nature contact and plant consciousness is for urban populations. Considering rapid urbanisation, these phenomena are of increasing concern in China. Integrating EE curricula in Chinese cities is necessary to help younger…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to untangle the influence of Linda Tuhiwai Smith's "Decolonizing Methodologies" on botanical gardens, particularly in the context of commemorating 25 years since its publication. By examining the intersections between decolonial theory and botanical practices, this article seeks to elucidate the…

Especially within the light of the current loss of biodiversity, we want our students to gain a better understanding of the issues at stake in order to take action and support plants and their pollinators. Many educational approaches focus on honeybees, disregarding the vast diversity in the context of pollination systems and the complex…

Recent biological research (Trewavas, 2003; Mancuso & Viola, 2013; Gagliano, 2018) has (re)demonstrated the variety and complexity of the adaptive behaviour of plants. In parallel with these findings, and in acknowledgement of the important role played by plants in the biosphere and climate of the planet, the representation of plants in…

The yellow-blue color pair has been used in creative artwork such as paintings and designs and in color engineering. Herein we present a method for using the yellow-blue combination in a chemistry lesson dealing with [pi]-conjugated molecules for first-year undergraduate students who are not science majors. The lesson begins with an introduction…

An undergraduate laboratory experiment has been developed for the synthesis of a reactive cross-linker that is useful in various highly visual demonstrations of organic reactivity, click chemistry, and biobased polymer synthesis. A triazolinedione-based cross-linker, which is known as a useful reagent for click chemistry, can be obtained from…

Education that covers topics such as climate change is critical to developing future scientists and researchers. Facilitating students' recognition of climate change as it occurs in their community can strengthen engagement with the content. Here, we highlight our work in developing a large-scale activity that introduced many facets of climate…

The growing interest in outdoor early childhood education, even in countries with a weak environmental tradition such as Portugal, tends to be associated with a concern over the alienation between urban/Western children and nature. While educational projects in nature criticize this separation, they still maintain a bad culture vs good nature…

Raman scattering spectroscopies are important analytical tools in modern chemistry. Here, we describe the construction of the unamplified Raman scattering analysis (URSA) instrument: an inexpensive, open-table Raman spectrometer that uses a 532 nm diode-pumped laser as a light source. Upon application of this spectrometer to DNA extracted from…