Measuring Students’ Plant Awareness: A Prerequisite for Effective Botany Education

Figures & data

Figure 1. The four postulated domains of plant awareness.

Table 1. Results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis for the ‘Plants as living organisms’ scale: Unstandardised and standardised factor loadings. N = 345.

Item			Factors
	Sub-scale Animals		Sub-scale Plants		Sub-scale Bacteria
	Est.	Std. Est.	Est.	Std. Est.	Est.	Std. Est.
… consist of cells.	0.923	0.838	0.986	0.736	0.369	0.249
… can move.	1.075	0.976	0.619	0.462	1.299	0.875
… reproduce.	0.978	0.888	0.900	0.672	1.312	0.884
… grow	0.965	0.877	1.272	0.949	0.946	0.637
… subsist.	1.039	0.944	1.176	0.878	1.314	0.885
… are excitable	0.891	0.809	0.929	0.693	0.910	0.613
… can get sick.	1.033	0.938	0.893	0.667	0.747	0.503
… die.	1.094	0.994	1.225	0.914	1.103	0.743

Note. Est. = Unstandardised factor loading; Std. Est. = Standardised factor loadings; Effect coding method of factor identification (Little, Slegers, and Card 2006).

Table 2. Results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis for the ‘Knowledge bout plants’ scale: Unstandardised and Standardised Factor Loadings. N = 345.

Item	Factors
	Sub-scale Plant species identification		Sub-scale Identification of spice plants		Sub-scale Anatomy of edible plants
	Est.	Std. Est.	Est.	Std. Est.	Est.	Std. Est.
Bellis perennis	1.285	0.662
Taraxacum officinalis	0.864	0.446
Quercus sp.	0.586	0.302
Picea abies	0.843	0.435
Calendula officinalis	1.422	0.733
Thymus vulgaris			1.326	0.897
Origanum majorana			1.271	0.860
Origanum vulgare			1.214	0.822
Ocimum basilicum			1.208	0.817
Piper nigrum			0.592	0.401
Petroselinum crispum			0.475	0.321
Rosmarinus officinalis			0.914	0.618
Lactuca sativa					0.592	0.362
Cucumis sativa					1.311	0.801
Malus sp.					1.154	0.705
Pisum sativum					1.303	0.796
Cucurbita pepo					1.349	0.824
Solanum melongena					1.341	0.819
Asparagus officinalis					0.559	0.341
Brassica oleracea var. italica (Broccoli)					0.391	0.239

Note. Est. = Unstandardised factor loading; Std. Est. = Standardised factor loadings; Effect coding method of factor identification (Little, Slegers, and Card 2006).

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics: Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficients, Means and Standard Deviations for the ‘plants as living organisms’ scale and the ‘knowledge about plants’ scale. N = 345.

	Variable	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.
‘Plants as living organisms’ scale	1. Animals
	2. Plants	0.54
	3. Bacteria	0.41	0.47
‘Knowledge about plants’ scale	4. Plant species Identification	0.14	0.19	0.10
	5. Identification of spice plants	0.33	0.38	0.27	0.42
	6. Anatomy of edible plants	0.14	0.19	0.19	0.35	0.38
	Mean	7.42	5.95	4.96	3.15	4.60	3.65
	Standard Deviation	1.37	2.02	2.24	1.12	1.90	2.54

Note. Statistically significant results at p < .05 are in boldface. Important correlation coefficients are highlighted in grey.

Table 4. Frequencies (in percent) of the characteristics of life attributed to animals, plants, and bacteria. N = 345.

	Animals	Plants	Bacteria
… consist of cells	80.9	76	50.3
… can move	95.1	27.5	80.35
… reproduce	95.1	76.6	79.8
… grow	93.7	91.9	45.1
… subsist	96.24	81.2	71.4
… are excitable	84.1	78	40.2
… can get sick	96.8	51.7	19.1
… die	97.4	84.1	72

Little, T. D., D. W. Slegers, and N. A. Card. 2006. “A non-arbitrary method of identifying and scaling latent variables in SEM and MACS models.“ Structural Equation Modeling 13 (1): 59–72.

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