Beauty, memories and symbolic meaning: Swedish student teachers´ views of their favourite plant and animal

ABSTRACT

In the twenty years since the first theory of ‘plant blindness’ was published much discussion has ensued concerning this phenomenon. More recent research, not only demonstrates that humans appear to favour animals over plants but also indicates a preference for mammals with forward-facing eyes. For this paper, we analysed answers to an online survey conducted with 202 student primary teachers in Sweden collected over a period of two years. We focus on two open-ended questions concerning favourite plant and animal choices and motivations for these choices. Our intention in this study was not to contrast animal vs. plant, but rather to further explore differential appreciation of plants and animals. Our findings suggest that there are large variations regarding relationships with plants and that affective connections with plant-life are translated through expressions of beauty, symbolic meaning, emotions (life-long) memories, colour, smell and size, and that similar characteristics seem to attract humans to animals. Our results – in line with arguments presented in recent studies – strongly suggest that in biological education and conservation contexts we should rely more intentionally on cultural and personal factors, utilise pre-existing experience-based human-plant bonds, and in so doing reinforce human recognition and appreciation of plants.

KEYWORDS:

• Plant blindness
• favourite organism
• student teachers
• education
• survey

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the students who gave their consent to participate and Associate Professor Bente Eriksen, who contributed photos to the survey and checked the botanical content. Our sincere thanks also to Dr Catherine MacHale for her thorough check of the language. We would also like to thank the Swedish Research Council for their financial support as well as the anonymous reviewers of this paper, for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://idpp.gu.se/english/Research/research_projects/beyond-plant-blindness-seeing-the-importance-of-plants-for-a-sustainable-world-.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Dnr 2014-2013).