Plant Awareness Disparity in Secondary School Students’ Nature Experiences

Abstract This study investigates the role of plants and animals in a sample of 814 secondary school students (395 female, 371 male and 15 diverse, aged 10–18 years) who portrayed a nature experience of their own choice through drawing and writing. More specifically, we tested the hypotheses from the plant awareness disparity (PAD) literature, that school students find nature experiences of plants less memorable and less personally relevant than nature experiences of animals. Therefore, we asked students to indicate how personally relevant they perceive the nature experience which they portrayed. Furthermore, we used a short nature connectedness scale by Richardson and colleagues. Although nature experiences of plants were only slightly less memorable than nature experiences of animals – judged by the similar numbers of both types of nature experiences – nature experiences of plants were less personally relevant than experiences of animals and experiences without plants and animals. Furthermore, secondary school students who reported nature experiences of plants exhibited lower nature connectedness than students reporting nature experiences of animals. As a main educational implication, we suggest to focus on increasing the personal relevance of experiences of plants.