Teaching the Plant Kingdom Using Cooperative Learning and Plants Elements: A Case Study with Spanish Secondary School Students

A case study with Spanish secondary school students

Abstract

The learning of the plant kingdom can be achieved more successfully if tasks involved the direct contact with elements of the vegetal world where students have the possibility of working in small groups cooperatively within in the secondary classroom. This paper analyses the student’s understanding of the general and floral physiology of angiosperms within a teaching sequence where the cooperative learning was used with 74 Spanish secondary school students. The influence on learning of group work and the use of natural elements was assessed by comparing two tasks administered individually before and after the sequence. The Fisher exact test detected statistically significant differences between the two stages in favour of cooperative learning and the use of plants. We can conclude that this active method of learning the plant kingdom as it enables students to physically get closer to the subject of the plant kingdom whilst developing their scientific knowledge through group work.