The abilities to think critically and communicate effectively are the most important skills that a student can develop during his or her formal education. Consequently, the book has been written in such a way to develop those skills as they learn about plants, what plants are, how they function, how they interact with each other and the environment, where they came from, and how we use them. As is the nature of all textbooks, it contains an abundance of interesting "facts" but the real emphasis of this practice book is how we know. The book emphasized on the details of practical knowledge and reduced the overwhelming number of new terms that usually appear in the text. In place of that, author substituted more of the process of science. The book emphasis on scientific process involves explaining botany as botany is done. Specifically, author describe the competing hypotheses that botanists have devised to answer questions about botanical phenomena, the experiments done by botanists to test these hypotheses, interpretations of data, and the many unanswered questions and unresolved conflicts that remain. This approach differ significantly from that of merely presenting definitions and the conclusions of experiments.
