Mind maps for eliciting and assessing plant awareness: A preliminary study on pre‐service teachers

Societal Impact Statement Teachers play an indispensable role in promoting citizens' plant awareness. To this end, they need adequate plant knowledge –including classification–, experience in out‐of‐classroom settings, and enthusiasm for plants. With the aim of improving pre‐service teachers' plant awareness, we designed and implemented a didactic sequence including several drawing exercises, prominently botanical illustration, which ran in parallel with a gardening program that provided an outdoor learning experience. Assessment was performed through mind maps and revealed improvements related to knowledge of plants, including morphological knowledge and appreciation of plants' beauty, which may positively influence their teaching practice in the future. Summary Promoting plant awareness is considered a main goal of biological education. Plant awareness is particularly relevant in teachers, who oversee the botanical education of future generations. The literature highlights the need to develop plant knowledge, experience in outdoor education, and enthusiasm for plants in pre‐service teachers. We designed a didactic sequence contextualized at an organic garden, constituted by both artistic and scientific activities. The artistic perspective consisted of drawing based on observation (prominently, botanical illustration), with the aim of constructing knowledge on plant morphology, and promoting emotional engagement through appreciation of plants' beauty. Several instruments were used to collect information on initial ideas and the process of learning, outstandingly mind maps, a type of multimodal diagram used to represent ideas on a topic by means of drawings and text. A qualitative procedure was developed to analyze them, encompassing three perspectives: information structure, artistic performance (e.g., graphic richness), and scientific performance (plant knowledge, per content categories). Obtained data were subsequently analyzed through statistical tests. This preliminary study shows that knowledge of plant morphology was developed through botanical illustration, incorporated by pre‐service teachers, and used in final mind maps. Significant improvements were observed in certain dimensions of plant awareness, related to plant knowledge and the aesthetic appreciation of their biological characteristics.