Integrating Local Plant Knowledge into Elementary Curriculum: A Scalable Model for Community Sustainability

Abstract

Plants are crucial for sustaining community livelihood and should be thoroughly integrated into education; however, students often suffer from Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD). This phenomenon causes students to fail to appreciate the value of plants, often because they fail to notice or value them in their surroundings. Although numerous interventions have been suggested to address PAD, we still lack a comprehensive instrument with which to measure the interconnectedness of plant awareness knowledge and the effectiveness of such interventions. To address this gap, this study developed and validated a new scale to measure plant awareness knowledge in elementary school students. We used the Nipa palm (Nypa fruticans Wurmb) as a specific case study within the Pak Phanang Basin of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand. This study was conducted in two phases, following the standards for education and psychology testing. In the first phase, a systematic literature review based on the Plants, People, and Planet (PPP) concept was used to identify the dimensions and components of the scale. In the second phase, the scale was developed, and its construct validity was analyzed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The EFA and CFA provided evidence of a three-factor structure, confirming three distinct yet correlated dimensions of plant knowledge. The three subscales are as follows: Nature of Life, which focuses on students’ knowledge of the physical and biological characteristics of the plant; Interconnectedness of All Things, which measures knowledge of the plant’s relationship with its ecosystem and the community’s way of life; and Greatest Public Benefit, which assesses knowledge of the plant’s economic and cultural value to the community. The scale, comprising 13 items, demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values above 0.75 across the three subscales. These findings provide educators with a valuable tool for assessing plant awareness and implementing interventions that foster ecological literacy and community sustainability.