ArtPlantae Today

Field journals are the most important tool for any biologist. Like artists, field biologists have definite opinions about what their journals should be like. I was taught how to keep a field journal in a 8.5” x 5.5” format. My field journal still has the Celsius/Farenheit temperature conversion chart I taped to it almost 30 years ago, as well as a graph of soil surface temperatures at which foraging occurs in three seed-eating ants (this is from my days of identifying ant heads in lizard scat).

In today’s world, gadgets with touch screens seem to be the new note taking tools while the handwritten journal is presented as more of a novelty. Today we give paper and pencil some well-deserved attention and learn how biologists teach students the value of learning from field journals.

What is the value of old-school style field journals?

This topic is discussed by professors John Farnsworth, Lyn Baldwin and Michelle Bezanson in An Invitation for Engagement: Assigning and Assessing Field Notes to Promote Deeper Levels of Observation. In their paper, the authors explore how their colleagues use field journals in college-level natural history classes. The authors also make a case for the inclusion of creative writing and drawing in science journals.

Within the meditative lines of a landscape drawing or a contour drawing of a plant, the marks on a page can move beyond a visual image to celebration. The science of ecology needs the joy of art.

— John Farnsworth, Lyn Baldwin and Michelle Bezanson

Farnsworth et al. (2014) believe field notebooks should be a component of all natural history courses because they help students pay attention to their surroundings, encourage deeper understanding and provide learners with a place to record their experiences with the natural world.

The authors suggest instructors use a rubric to help assess student journals and offer two examples of scoring rubrics in their paper. One of the rubrics is a straight-forward scoring guide and the second rubric is a scoring guide showing instructors how they can engage students in journaling on a deeper level. This second rubric is especially good and I recommend taking a look at it to see how it may contribute to what you do in your own classrooms or programs.

Natural History is About Connections, Not Memorization

With so much information coming at them, students often resort to memorization to “learn” in their classes. Farnsworth et al. (2014) propose correcting this behavior with field journals so students can better observe Nature’s patterns and processes. To help them provide examples of how journals can be used as tools for more meaningful learning, they contacted colleagues at the Natural History Network and invited them to send examples of journaling assignments and rubrics they use in their own classrooms. Using the materials they received, Farnsworth et al. (2014) created a list of best practices. This list of best practices includes ideas to help students record Nature’s patterns and to interpret what they observe. It also includes suggestions about how to encourage students to write for future generations and how to encourage students to draw what they see.

To read all of the best practices and to view the rubrics described above,
view An Invitation for Engagement online or download a copy. This article is available for free from the Journal of Natural History Education and Experience.

Literature Cited
Farnsworth, J.S., L. Baldwin, and M. Bezanson. 2014. An invitation for engagement: Assigning and assessing field notes to promote deeper levels of observation. Journal of Natural History Education and Experience. 8:12-20

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Plants really do receive less attention than animals.

This was determined in a study of attention “blinks” by Benjamin Balas and Jennifer L. Momsen. Experiments confirming this physiological component of plant blindness can be reviewed in Attention “Blinks” Differently for Plants and Animals.

Using an established research protocol in the study of visual cognition, Balas and Momsen investigated the ability of individuals to detect plant and animal images presented to them in rapid succession. The protocol they used is a measurement of “attentional blink” which they describe as a “phenomenon in visual perception in which detecting the first of two targets in a sequence of rapidly presented images compromises the ability to detect the second target for a short time” (Balas & Momsen, 2014). They go on to explain that this compromise occurs because the first image captures the visual attention of the viewer. Because it takes time for a viewer to disengage from the first image (and free up visual attention), subsequent images appearing too close to the first one tend to go unnoticed (Balas & Momsen, 2014). That is, “attention blinks” (Balas & Momsen, 2014).

Balas & Momsen (2014) recruited 24 psychology students to take part in this study. Half were asked to detect plant images and half were asked to detect animal images. Students were placed in a darkened room and viewed image sequences on a MacBook laptop computer. At the end of each sequence, participants were asked to respond to questions about what they observed. Specific details about the research procedure and statistical analyses used by Balas & Momsen (2014) are described in their paper.

Data collected by the authors indicate:

• Attention is not captured by plants the same way it is captured by animals.
• Participants are more likely to miss plant images.
• Participants more often report seeing plant images when none were present in the image sequence.
• Participants’ attention to plants is delayed, suggesting “attentional resources are deployed differently for plant targets” (Balas & Momsen, 2014).

These results demonstrate a measurable difference in how humans perceive plants and animals and suggest that plant blindness may be a result of delayed attention, instead of reduced attention (Balas & Momsen, 2014).

So what does this all mean for educators?

Because plant blindness has a physiological base, Balas and Momsen (2014) offer these suggestions to educators:

• Explain to students that plant blindness exists.
• Incorporate engaging active learning opportunities about plants into your lessons.
• Integrate plants into life science lessons and stop treating botany as a separate subject.
• Add auditory and visual learning components to your lessons. Do not rely only on text and images.

The article by Benjamin Balas and Jennifer L. Momsen is available for free through an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License. Click on the link below to download a PDF copy of this article.

Literature Cited
Balas, Benjamin and Jennifer L. Momsen. 2014. Attention “blinks” differently for plants and animals. CBE – Life Sciences Education. 13(3): 437-443. Retrieved from http://www.lifescied.org/content/13/3/437.full.pdf+html.

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Plant projects can be overwhelming. I had a school plant project once that was, quite simply, a hassle. I did not think there was enough direction and many parents didn’t like it either.

Since then I have seen other people’s children struggle through plant projects. There must be a better way, I always think. I may have found a better plant project in the literature. What I like about it is that it encourages the exploration of different plant communities instead of requiring the collection of specific plant species. It also invites students to include a plant they find especially interesting.

Teacher Catherine Hibbitt writes about this plant project in
A Growth Opportunity. In her article, Hibbitt describes how her project is more than a traditional plant project and explains how her students also learn project management skills, learn how to conduct research, and learn about biodiversity, patterns in nature and ecology.

Hibbitt (1999) explains her project begins with students visiting a field site to record as many observations as they can. Students write and sketch about what they hear and see. After sharing observations with each other, students are led into the collection phase of the project during which they collect, study and describe tree leaves. Students also collect other plant types and eventually prepare herbarium specimens and present their collections to the class. The herbarium collections created at the beginning of the school year are used as a foundation for lessons in plant reproduction, plant behavior, plant chemistry, plant products, writing and natural science illustration (students create posters and postage stamps).

The instructions for this plant project can be found in Hibbitt (1999).
Get a copy of this paper at the NSTA Store for 99¢.

Example of an Ongoing Plant Project
Two years ago we learned about a plant project in the Chicago area dedicated to encouraging an interest in native plants. Scientific illustrator Kathleen Garness is completing the illustrations for this project. I am happy to pass along news about the plant guide she is helping to create.

Kathleen says the project team has updated the plant families’ page on the website of the Field Museum of Natural History. They added information about six plant families to the collection: the Cyperaceae, Iridaceae, Juncaceae, Poaceae, Polemoniaceae, and Violaceae, bringing the total up to twenty. The project team hopes to add five more families during the next year.

Botanists Linda Curtis (author of Woodland Sedges of Northeastern Illinois) and Morton Arboretum’s Andrew Hipp (author of Field Guide to Wisconsin Sedges) edited the Carex family page; Stephen Packard (founding director, Audubon Chicago Region) edited the Grasses page; Kay Yatskievych from the Missouri Botanic Garden edited the Iris page; Rebecca Collings from the Field Museum edited the Phlox family page; and Dr. Harvey Ballard Jr. edited the Violaceae.

The guide Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region is available online for free. The pages of this guide are standard 8.5″ x 11″ pages, fit easily into a 3-ring binder and are easy to laminate. Artists, naturalists and educators in the Chicago region are encouraged to bookmark the guide’s website.

Go to Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region

Literature Cited
Hibbitt, Catherine. 1999. A Growth Opportunity. Science Scope. 22(6): 34-36

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