Students’ conceptions of plant reproduction processes

Understanding plant reproduction is an important goal in biology education. Unfortunately, various studies show that students have difficulties in connecting the stages of plant reproduction. Students' conceptions of the processes of sexual reproduction (e.g. pollination and seed dispersal) remain unclear, although these conceptions appear crucial for understanding plant reproduction. Therefore, the current study focuses particularly on students' conceptions of the processes of plant reproduction. To assess students' conceptions, we used open-ended tasks and analysed the answers through qualitative content analysis. In this contribution we present the results of the task 'Open description of plant reproduction', which asked students to draw and describe their ideas of plant reproduction. The task was completed by 228 Austrian students from secondary school (age 10-18). The results show that students often describe only one of the processes involved in reproduction (either pollination or seed dispersal) but rarely describe the correct consecutive order of both processes. Moreover, many students from all age groups mix pollination and seed dispersal. This implies that it is necessary to address the confusion of these processes explicitly. The presented task can further help to easily assess students' conceptions in class and specifically address students' difficulties and needs.