Are plants living beings? Biases in the interpretation of landscape features by pre-service teachers

ABSTRACT

Interpreting the landscape that surrounds us is somewhat personal. However, it is necessary to explore the interpretation made by future teachers so that we can reflect on their observations. This study collected data from five academic years of undergraduates in Early Childhood Education (N = 421), who were asked to fill out a questionnaire with different items while observing the landscape features when walking through a park. This article demonstrates for the very first time that the trend shown in childhood of not considering plants as living beings remains in the landscape perception of the university students. The students must be confronted with their own biases in interpreting the landscape so that they are aware and do not transfer these biases to their future students.

KEYWORDS:

• Living beings
• plants
• Early Childhood Education
• teaching sciences
• outdoor education

Acknowledgements

The results set out in this study are framed within the Educational Innovation Project (2014-12-6009) ‘Work to Bring Nature to Boys and Girls in Early Childhood Education Degree’ at the University of Córdoba. We would like to thank the university students for their collaboration, as well as the help provided by Carmen Briones Fernández in building the database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.