Plant blindness is defined as the inability to notice plants in one's own environment, recognize their importance for the environment and human beings, appreciate their aesthetic and unique biological features, and the tendency to rank plants as inferior to animals. Many people exhibit symptoms of plant blindness (Wandersee & Schussler, 1999).…

As young children encounter animal and plant life, they are eager to figure out where plants and animals come from, which plants are edible, and which animals like to eat different plants. Gardening experiences provide ample opportunities to explore how plants grow, what plants need to grow, how to care for plants, and how to harvest the edible…

Plants is a neglected topic in biology education. Educational activities about plants are important in early terms because they are the base of both the science and the biology education. The purpose of this research is to understand opinions of the children by utilizing drawings and the colors they used. It is run by the phenomenological model…

This article addresses how we can develop learning environments that establish a need for scientific practices and provide a context for developing content knowledge through practice. It argues that Pickering's (1995) notion of "The Mangle of Practice" informs these efforts by focusing our attention on how resistance, or push-back from…

This correlational study examined the relationship between perceived task complexity and task interest for individuals with varying levels of domain knowledge and/or individual interest. Forty-five college student participants (46% women) reported their knowledge and individual interest in biology before learning about the biology of fungus.…

Raising consciousness about the environment and learning ways to care for our planet are important for all citizens of the world. Young children are particularly receptive to learning new concepts; thus the preschool years are an ideal time to teach lessons about the environment. It is often the case that the information learned when children are…