As Autumn stretches across the UK, many trees, once green and vibrant, now begin to turn into a kaleidoscope of reds, oranges and browns. But how many of these lovely trees can you name and does it matter? Paul Hawken (1993) suggested that the average Western adult would be able to recognise over 1000 brands and logos yet be able to identify fewer than ten local, indigenous plants. As the new term starts at UWE Bristol and we welcome our students with outdoor learning experiences, how many will know a horse chestnut from an oak, a silver birch from a sycamore? How many will identify a dandelion, nettle or celandine? From past experience I know my expectations are now low. Amprazis & Papadopoulou (2020) remind us that this a lack of awareness matters. At this point in the climate and ecological emergency the neglect of plants is impeding our ability to meet Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and researchers in ECRG are exploring research methods and pedagogies that look to support this.
Since the early 20th century biologists have noted the lack of interest in plants and their neglect in education (e.g., Ganong (1906), Wandersee and Schussler (2001)) – defining this phenomenon as plant blindness. Since then, one challenge for educational practitioners and researchers has been to investigate the causes of a lack of plant awareness and to reform pedagogies for plants. Once you’ve spotted the lack of plants then the human and nonhuman animal bias that besieges our everyday is hard to unspot. Gagliano et al. (2017) reported that between 2010-2015 journals such as Nature and Science published half the number of articles about plants when compared to those of animals. Plants are secondary to their animal counterparts, but people are working to rebalance this.
I was recently invited to the University of Vienna’s International Research Symposium which focussed on methodologies for investigating and fostering plant awareness. The symposium offered an exciting insight into international perspectives about plant awareness, comparing assessment tools and studies of evidence based practice and innovation for teaching and learning. In my own work I attempt to broaden the discussion of plant blindness which is apparent within so many texts, movies and games for younger readers. In our recent article in Children’s Literature in Education, myself and former UWE PGCE student Catherine Macleod (Jones and Macleod, 2022) argue for the inclusion of plant representations and discussions of plants relating to children’s fiction. In addition, I’ve been working with ECRG’s Tessa Podpadec, Kalpa Ghelani, Ros Steward, Jake Bacon, and David Satenstein to explore how craft involving plants can be used to explore these themes and Bristol’s Sustainable Department Store (Sparks) to develop workshops for schools that all begin with a plant – we will be reporting on these projects over the coming months. In the meantime, I will enjoy the changing colours of the seasons and continue to be aware of our planty companions.
Check out Verity’s article:
Jones, V., MacLeod, C. Why Children Need to Read About Plants at a Time of Climate Change. Child Lit Educ (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-022-09511-x
References:
Alexandros Amprazis & Penelope Papadopoulou (2020) Plant blindness: a faddish research interest or a substantive impediment to achieve sustainable development goals?, Environmental Education Research, 26:8, 1065-1087SDGs 2015
Ganong, W. F. (1906). The erroneous physiology of the element of text-books. School Science and Mathematics, 6(4), 297–302.
Paul Hawken. 1993. The Ecology of Commerce: a declaration of sustainability. New York, Harper Collins.
Wandersee J.H., Schussler E.E. (2001). Towards a theory of plant blindness. Plant Science Bulletin 47, 2–9
