The paper describes a curriculum innovation project for integrating the sustainability-oriented socio-scientific issue of phosphate recovery into undergraduate chemistry education. Justification for the topic is derived from the importance of responsible use of phosphates as fertilizers for achieving some of the sustainable development goals issued by the United Nations in 2015, but also by the consideration of the phosphorus biochemical flow into the environment in the concept of the world’s planetary boundaries. Integration of the topic into undergraduate general chemistry was operated by a digital learning environment providing the base for a transdisciplinary approach towards the topic. Findings are reported from an implementation case in a research university in the USA.
This paper presents a case study that investigated students' perceptions on the integration of a socio-scientific issue into a general chemistry course at a public university located in northwestern California. The teaching intervention is based on a digital learning environment structured by the software Prezi that students used to explore the issue of extracting unconventional crude oil and natural gas resources through hydraulic fracturing. The learning environment offered information about the chemistry of hydraulic fracturing in combination with a multiperspective view on its geoscience aspects as well as the potential risks associated with a controversial societal reception. The results show a positive perception on the inclusion of hydraulic fracturing in general chemistry education when framed in a broad picture of its potential ecological and societal impacts. The results are parallel to the findings from German high school chemistry teachers that used the same learning environment and a related approach.
The debate on the use of pesticides is very current in the public media when it comes to topics such as organic farming, bee mortality, and the use of glyphosate. The broad range of pesticide applications and their potential environmental impact makes pesticides an interesting topic for science education in general and for chemistry teaching in particular. This is particularly true when conventional pesticide use is contrasted with current chemistry research efforts to develop alternatives based on the ideas of green chemistry. This paper discusses the potential relevance of pesticides for chemistry education in connection with education for sustainable development. It gives a brief outlook on pesticides in science teaching and connects the topic to socio-scientific issue-based chemistry education. A case study which developed a lesson plan for secondary school students is presented here. It defines pesticides, before focusing on the development of green pesticides as potential alternatives to current products. The lesson is focusing learning about chemistry rather than learning of chemistry in the means that the lesson introduces quite young chemistry learners (age range 15–17) to ideas of green and sustainable chemistry and how green alternatives in chemistry can be assessed and compared to traditional alternatives. Video vignettes of a scientist are used to introduce the topic to students. Finally, both glyphosate as a conventional, industrial pesticide and orange oil as an example of a green pesticide are compared using spider chart diagrams. The lesson plan was cyclically designed by a group of ten chemistry teachers using participatory action research. It was piloted with the help of secondary school chemistry student teachers and then tested in five German secondary school classes (grades 10/11). The use of the spider charts was regarded as especially helpful by the learners, most of whom felt that they had been able to understand the controversy surrounding pesticides.
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