Aspects of Secondary Students’ Understanding of Plant Nutrition

The report from the Children’s Learning in Science Project (CLIS) gives an account of a number of aspects of students’ understanding of plant nutrition including:
• To what extent do students understand that plants carry out autotrophic nutrition and not heterotrophic nutrition as do animals?
• To what extent do students understand the role of light, chlorophyll and raw materials in photosynthesis?
• How do students conceptualise the relationship between food energy and the maintenance of plant metabolism?

Contents of the summary report
• Introduction
• How were students’ understandings investigated?
• What kinds of questions were used?
• What were the main findings of the interview study?
• Summary of findings
• Some implications for teaching and learning
• What do these findings suggest for science teaching?
• Suggestions for teaching and learning
• Implications for curriculum planning
• A summary of key ideas on plant nutrition that students may hold

Contents of the full report
Section 1: The scope of the report
Section 2: Plant nutrition in secondary science courses
Section 3: Review of literature on children’s understandings of plant nutrition
Section 4: Analysis of written responses to questions
Section 5: Comparisons between groups of students
Section 6: Interviews with students about aspects of plant nutrition
Section 7: Summary of findings
Section 8: Implications

• URL: http://stem.org.uk/rx3ya