INTENDED WORKSHOP AUDIENCE

Educators/Teachers
The Workshop is intended for teachers who want to incorporate concepts related to ethnobotany, ecology, plant science or multiculturalism into their curriculum and for parents, students or anyone else who wishes to learn more about ethnobotany.

Teachers may also choose to integrate ethnobotany into related courses. As an interdisciplinary subject, ethnobotany draws upon many scientific fields including botany, anthropology, ecology, chemistry, medicine, history, and economics. Depending on the class being taught, different aspects of ethnobotany can be emphasized. In a biology class, the study of useful plants easily weaves into the unit on botany, and in an ecology unit the importance of biodiversity, habitat, and conservation can be emphasized.

Students
Cultural Uses of Plants challenges middle and high-school students to design and implement their own unique experiments starting from a reference point they can relate to: a useful plant in their own cultures.

The course interweaves theory and practice and leads the student on a tour of the world of ethnobotany, a world where the study of plants meets the study of cultures. This tour begins with a solid introduction and goes on to guide the reader through some of the research and interviewing techniques used by ethnobotanists. Each student is encouraged to focus on a plant relevant to her or her ethnic or cultural background as the class learns how to safely test plants for their nutritional value, medicinal and other potential uses, and ecological significance.

Each inquiry-based unit includes Questions for Thought, so students can review what they've learned, and Laboratory and Field Activities, where students go step-by-step through experiments or projects in which they record their data, analyze their findings, and draw their own conclusions.

Students will enjoy related readings, experiments and developing a science project that tests plants for their useful properties. They will see themselves reflected in the many photographs of students and their projects. Teachers will appreciate the fact that Cultural Uses of Plants not only satisfies the National Science Education Standards, but also can supplement the curriculum of Social Studies, History, Language Arts, Health, Mathematics, Environmental Science or Biology classes.

It is designed for students who are interested in study the ethnobotany. Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the interactions between human cultures and plants. This includes a wide range of topics taken from an even wider range of disciplines. Ethnobotany is a composite science: no one with training in any one field has an advantage over those with training in other fields.