Integrating circular economy into STEM education: A promising pathway toward circular citizenship development

Abstract

The young generation is expected to address current development challenges. The main challenge of sustainable development is the problem of waste management and recycling. To promote long-term sustainability, it is crucial to equip youth with contemporary knowledge and skills and to change their daily habits. The Circular Economy (CE) has become a key concept in responding to unsustainable resource use and waste management globally. At the same time, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education is an innovative teaching approach to promote learners’ capacity for self-direction, problem-solving, collaboration, and management. This paper argues the role of STEM education in connecting science with society, the benefits of teaching CE in promoting sustainable consumption and production behaviors, and the potential integration of CE into STEM education through real-world context inquiry and real-world problem-solving. It also presents the case of Vietnam, where integration of STEM education and CE in secondary schools is crucial for a CE toward sustainable development. Questionnaire surveys with 873 secondary school teachers and semi-structured interviews with 54 were conducted during the integrated STEM professional trainings. The aims were to examine teachers’ perspectives on the relevance of STEM education and CE to sustainable development and their behaviors toward integrating CE concepts into daily STEM teaching activities. The findings showed a high perception of STEM teachers on the relevance of CE with STEM teaching, the Vietnam context, its interestingness, and the importance of integrating CE into STEM education. Surveyed teachers have also voluntarily integrated development issues and CE principles into STEM teaching. Including CE in STEM education in secondary education offers a promising opportunity to foster more profound societal change toward sustainable development, which contributes to SDG4 — equitable and quality education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles and SDG 12.5 — reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse.

Exploring Dominant Approach for Teaching Circular Economy

“…In addition, teaching methods such as active learning (Hoffman et al, 2021;Kioupi et al, 2022;Sierra & Suárez-Collado, 2021;Tuzun, 2020), problem-based learning (Kirchherr & Piscicelli, 2019b;Nguyen, 2023), games (de la Torre et al, 2021;Jääskä et al, 2021;Khoury et al, 2023b;Kioupi et al, 2022;Occhioni et al, 2023), and case studies (Liu & Côté, 2021;Spreafico & Landi, 2022) are also often practiced by teachers in circular economy teaching.…”

Exploring the Effectiveness of Problem-Based Learning in an International Undergraduate Program in Veterinary Sciences: Students’ Satisfaction, Experience and Learning

“…Indeed, todays' students should be able to integrate and connect ideas and perspectives across multiple disciplines and content areas to discover and propose new solutions. This is relevant for several professions, and in line with recent scientific publications [2][3][4], Animal Care graduates must develop the ability to promote and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships, receive and provide emotional support, and develop skills of self-care. These competencies are protective measures against poor mental health issues and compassion fatigue, to which animal caretakers and veterinarians are more predisposed compared to some other professions [5,6].…”