Browsing by Subject "luontokato"

Biodiversity loss is a growing challenge that affects the functioning of our planet. But it is possible to prevent loss of nature and restore ecosystems all over the world. This is called nature positive. Plants play a key role as producers of life. However, research indicates that nature positive is at least a little bit slowed down by a phenomenon known as plant blindness. Plant blindness could be prevented by strengthening plant species identification skills and increasing the interest in nature. Previous research shows that mobile applications for plant species identification can be a helpful tool to prevent plant blindness. These studies have found that students' motivation and interest to study plant species identification increases when mobile apps are used in combination with outdoor learning. This study is a literature review that gathers and evaluates studies about the use of mobile apps in plant species identification education. The study looked at how digital tools can help people understand biodiversity better and prevent plant blindness. Theoretical backgrounds and the didactic focus were also analyzed. The study combined an integrative and descriptive literature review. The didactic focus in the studies were evaluated by using the DFC (Didactic Focus based Categorization) -method. It was used to identify the main research focus and possible lack of research in this field. According to the results, teaching plant species identification was perceived as challenging and mobile apps for plant species identification were seen as helpful tools in teaching. The theories used in these studies were mainly based on four themes: plant blindness and preventing it, plant identification skills, digital teaching tools and outdoor learning. The main goal of the studies was to find solutions to prevent plant blindness. The results showed that the studies were cross-disciplinary and utilized various research methods. However, the results showed that they were mainly focused on the same didactic themes. Most of these studies (92%) studied students, and more than half (54%) focused on students' understanding of objectives and content, motivation, and attitudes. Especially, motivation stood out as an important area of research. On the other hand, there was little research on teachers or teaching organizations.