From 'plant blindness' to 'bug blindness': disseminating an evidence-based pedagogy for plants and refining methodologies in attitudinal research

植物对地球上的生命生存至关重要。人类依赖植物作为食物、药物和原材料。植物科学在粮食安全、适应和减缓气候变化方面发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，在现代社会中，有一种普遍的趋势是忽视植物，或者没有认识到它们的重要性，这种现象被称为植物盲症。植物盲症导致了研究和工业中的“绿色技能差距”，以及教育和环境保护中对植物的忽视。博士研究调查了一套基于游戏化，创造性艺术和数字学习的成人和儿童植物主题新教学方法的有效性。它考虑了这些如何有助于学习解决植物失明的理论和实践，以及现有的文献。2013年至2020年期间，该研究结果在学术期刊上发表了7篇文章，目前正在考虑进行另外3项研究。这项工作的博士后阶段将集中在三个领域。首先，通过在线课程和文章计划向非学术受众（包括教师和户外学习从业人员）传播研究结果，以提高对植物失明的认识，并促进有效的循证教学方法。该计划包括第一个关于植物盲症的MOOC（开放获取课程），建立在以前关于可持续粮食系统的MOOC的成功基础上，该课程有超过10，000人注册。与英国生态学会建立的植物盲症网络将为教育、研究和工业领域的专家提供一个共享平台，以提高植物在政策和实践中的知名度。第二，学术贡献，以会议论文、评论论文和科学教育期刊主题部分的形式。其目的是促进我们的理解，教学设计如何影响在这一领域的兴趣发展。“植物盲症”一词是近25年前提出的，但迄今为止的文献主要集中在其特征和单独干预的影响上。现在有必要对这些研究结果和建议的从业者。最后，一个新的研究领域的发展，这扩大了博士研究调查的态度和注意力不足的其他类别的生物多样性。有证据表明，人类对植物的偏见延伸到某些其他生物群体，特别是无脊椎动物。人们似乎更喜欢与人类非常相似的动物，尽管这种物种的感知效用或威胁、熟悉程度和易于检测也很重要。因此，与不太受欢迎但在生态上重要的分类群体相比，少数“魅力”物种获得了不成比例的资金，保护工作和公众支持。关于对生物多样性的态度，有大量的研究，但在方法的质量和有效性方面存在巨大差异。很少有研究对不同类别的生物多样性的态度进行比较，这可能有助于确定哪里存在最消极的态度或偏见。关于注意力缺陷，有一些常见的假设，这些假设还没有经过实验检验。许多调查问卷的设计并不是为了捕捉复杂的态度结构。这些因素阻碍了我们对生物多样性态度的理解，从而阻碍了我们有效应对的能力。新的研究将集中在方法学文献综述和设计和试点的一个新的态度问卷与9-11岁的孩子，一个重要的年龄组的态度发展。这项研究将最终制定一项重要工作的建议，以完善研究工具，并利用它们来衡量新的干预措施对生物多样性态度的影响。

Plants are essential for the survival of life on Earth. Humans rely on plants for food, medicine, and raw materials. Plant science plays a crucial role in food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation. Yet there is a widespread tendency in modern society to ignore plants, or fail to recognise their importance, a phenomenon known as plant blindness. Plant blindness has led to the 'green skills gap' in research and industry, as well as the neglect of plants in education and environmental conservation.The PhD research investigated the efficacy of a suite of novel teaching approaches for plant topics with adults and children, based on gamification, the creative arts and digital learning. It considered how these contributed to a theory and practice of learning to address plant blindness, alongside the existing literature. The findings were published as seven articles in academic journals from 2013 - 2020, with a further three studies currently under consideration.The post-doctoral phase of this work will focus on three areas. First, the dissemination of the research findings to a non-academic audience, including teachers and outdoor learning practitioners, through a programme of online courses and articles to increase awareness about plant blindness and to promote effective, evidence-based teaching approaches. The programme includes the first MOOC (open access course) about plant blindness, building on the success of a previous MOOC about sustainable food systems, which had more than10,000 enrolments. A plant blindness network with the British Ecological Society will provide a shared platform for experts in education, research, and industry to raise the profile of plants in policy and practice.Second, an academic contribution, in the form of a conference paper, a review paper and a themed section in a science education journal. The aim is to advance our understanding of how instructional design influences interest development in this field. The term 'plant blindness' was introduced nearly 25 years ago but the literature to date has focused on its characteristics and the impacts of lone interventions. There is now a need for a synthesis of these findings and recommendations for practitioners.Finally, the development of a novel area of research, which broadens the PhD inquiry to investigate attitudes and attention deficits for other categories of biodiversity. Evidence suggests that the human bias against plants extends to certain other groups of organisms, particularly invertebrates. There appears to be a preference for animals that closely resemble humans, although the perceived utility or threat, familiarity and ease of detection of the species are also important. As a result, a small number of 'charismatic' species receive a disproportionate amount of funding, conservation effort and public support, compared to less popular but ecologically important taxonomic groups. There is a significant body of research about attitudes to biodiversity but huge variation in the quality and validity of methodological approaches. Few studies have compared attitudes across different categories of biodiversity, which could help to identify where the most negative attitudes or bias exist. There are common assumptions made about attentional deficits, which have not been subject to experimental testing. Many questionnaires are not designed to capture the complex structure of attitudes. These factors impede our understanding about attitudes to biodiversity and thus our ability to respond effectively. The new research will focus on a methodological literature review and the design and piloting of a novel attitudinal questionnaire with 9-11-year-olds, an important age group for attitudinal development. This research will culminate in the development of a proposal for a significant piece of work, to refine the research instruments and use them to measure the impact of novel interventions on attitudes to biodiversity.