Promoting plant awareness in early childhood education: place-based methods to acknowledge plant diversity using pollination as a starting point

Plant diversity and their role for life on earth cannot be overestimated.

The concept of ‘plant blindness’ was coined 25-years ago to denominate the inability to recognize and acknowledge plants in any common setting.

This is especially important in an educational setting, where ‘plant blindness’ affects the way plant diversity and their role in different essential cycles are acknowledged.

While there are many educational studies on children’s attitudes towards animals, preschool children’s encounters with plants remain largely unexplored in research.

With pollination as a framework, the proposed project, performed in a preschool setting, will use plant-insect interactions as a bridge connecting animals (commonly more familiar to children), to the often unobserved diversity of plants.

This study therefore aims to design, carry out and evaluate science didactic methods with the aim of strengthening children’s abilities to acknowledge the diversity of plants.

The project will be carried out using a Mosaic approach, involving map-making, drawing, photography, film-making and concept mapping, during four years.

A revised version of the framework ´Botanical literacies in early childhood education´ will be produced and used as analytical tools.

Ultimately, the project will contribute with foundational knowledge on how to counter plant blindness, opening up novel ways for humans to better appreciate the critical role plants play for life on earth and in tackling climate change.