Global climate change is the greatest threat humanity faces as a species. Our future is dependent on the action of today, and yet climate change remains an existential problem full of uncertainty (Pachauri et al., 2014). On the brighter side, 194 nation-states have agreed to combat climate change by signing an international treaty to prevent the mean global temperature difference (since the industrial revolution) from exceeding 2° C—signified with the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (United Nations Environment Programme, 2015). As of 2023, the average sits at around 1° C (Climate Change, n.d.). Society must change to control the wasteful and climate-altering ways humans interact with the environment. Climate change has been politicized since at least April 22, 1970 (the first ‘earth day’), and there has been a general increase in public awareness (Hamilton et al., 2015; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). The required and limited number of solutions to climate change necessitates the incorporation of being ‘sustainable’ into education.
On June 3, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environmental and Development met and compiled Agenda 21, a policy document establishing goals for achieving sustainable humanity. Chapter 36 Section 3 outlines the purpose of education for sustainable development and its criticality in raising our capacity to tackle sustainability issues (Burmeister et al., 2012).
While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and developmental education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education is indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behavior consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socioeconomic environment, and human (which may include spiritual) development should be integrated in all disciplines and should employ formal and non-formal methods and effective means of communication.
The UN’s General Assembly also promoted such educational goals in Agenda 2030, which outlined the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs); see Appendix D. I found the content of Agenda 21 to be more substantial than Agenda 2030.
I mention these goals to highlight the global consensus governmental bodies have on education for a sustainable future. I believe this is justified. The next generation of citizens and scientists will have to make informed decisions regarding environmental and human hazards when engaging in science; therefore, preparing students to make those decisions should be a part of our curriculum. Furthermore, the incorporation of phenomena within instruction that pertain to problems faced by local communities has been used in K-12 science education to center student voices and use their emerging understanding in instruction, attempting to flip the script on what it means to engage in science (Krajcik & Shin, 2014; Morales-Doyle, 2017; Windschitl et al., 2018). Of the scientific disciplines, chemistry will be the focus of this report, specifically green chemistry (also referenced as green and sustainable chemistry). Let me highlight that some chemical processes may be green but not necessarily sustainable. For example, the use of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as an oxidant is considered green because it is relatively non-toxic and decomposes into water (H2O) and molecular oxygen (O2). However, the use of H2O2 is not sustainable because the production of H¬2O2 requires a lot of energy and generates substantial waste (Hâncu et al., 2002).
Other universities and colleges claim to be supporting education for sustainable development; over 115 institutions have signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, a ‘commitment’ to incorporating green and sustainable learning goals into curricular efforts. The learning goals were developed by Beyond Benign, a non-profit organization (About Mission & Vision, n.d.). Michigan State University signed in 2018. An institution/department that has signed the Green Chemistry Commitment agrees to incorporate specific learning objectives into their Chemistry (BS) curriculum. The exact process and timeline for this endeavor are unique to each institution. Those learning objectives include (1) a working theory of the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, (2) an understanding of toxicology, (3) skills to “assess chemical products and processes and design greener alternatives,” and (4) preparedness to serve society in development and use of products and processes that are benign to humans and the environment (HE Student Learning Objectives, 2019).
However, current curricular efforts to incorporate green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) into the laboratory curriculum lack meaningful evidence to prove their efficacy and are not based on current theories of learning (Bretz, 2019). Furthermore, I believe that knowledge of green chemistry should not be limited to chemistry majors, and these learning objectives reflect the chemical industry, not the student. The first learning objective of the Green Chemistry Commitment references a well-known list of principles in green chemistry research (the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry) created by Paul Anastas and John Warner in 1998, see Appendix A. These principles guide decisions made by chemists to engineer chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances (Anastas & Warner, 1998). While quite useful for a chemist or chemical engineer, these principles were not developed for our students, nor were they developed with education in mind. What does it mean to have a working theory of these principles? Why should students have this knowledge? What does it enable them to do? The learning objectives of the Green Chemistry Commitment reflect the compartmentalization of knowledge, which is not based on current theories of learning (How People Learn, 2000). I believe this lack of learning-theory-informed curricula and the centering of chemical-industry perspectives is adversative to any goals described above and, most importantly, to our students.
References
About Mission & Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.beyondbenign.org/about-mission-vision/
Anastas, P. T., & Warner, J. C. (1998). Green chemistry: Theory and practice. Oxford University Press.
Bretz, S. L. (2019). Evidence for the Importance of Laboratory Courses. Journal of Chemical Education, 96(2), 193–195. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00874
Burmeister, M., Rauch, F., & Eilks, I. (2012). Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and chemistry education. Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 13(2), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1039/C1RP90060A
Climate Change: Global Temperature | NOAA Climate.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved April 6, 2023, from http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
Hamilton, L. C., Hartter, J., Lemcke-Stampone, M., Moore, D. W., & Safford, T. G. (2015). Tracking Public Beliefs About Anthropogenic Climate Change. PLOS ONE, 10(9), e0138208. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138208
Hâncu, D., Green, J., & Beckman, E. J. (2002). H2O 2 in CO2: Sustainable Production and Green Reactions. Accounts of Chemical Research, 35(9), 757–764. https://doi.org/10.1021/ar010069r
HE Student Learning Objectives. (2019, July 16). https://www.beyondbenign.org/he-student-learning-objectives/
Krajcik, J. S., & Shin, N. (2014). Project-Based Learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 275–297). Cambridge University Press; Cambridge Core. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139519526.018
Maulucci, M. S. R., & Fann, K. T. (2016). Teaching for Social Justice in Science Education. In L. Avraamidou (Ed.), Studying Science Teacher Identity: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Explorations (pp. 111–128). SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-528-9_6
McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011). The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public’s Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(2), 155–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01198.x
Morales-Doyle, D. (2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy: A catalyst for academic achievement and social transformation. Science Education, 101(6), 1034–1060. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21305
Pachauri, R. K., Allen, M. R., Barros, V. R., Broome, J., Cramer, W., Christ, R., Church, J. A., Clarke, L., Dahe, Q. D., Dasqupta, P., Dubash, N. K., Edenhofer, O., Elgizouli, I., Field, C. B., Forster, P., Friedlingstein, P., Fuglestvedt, J., Gomez-Echeverri, L., Hallegatte, S., … van Ypersele, J.-P. (2014). Climate change 2014 synthesis report. Contribution of working groups I, II, and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC.
Windschitl, M., Thompson, J. J., & Braaten, M. L. (2018). Ambitious science teaching. Harvard Education Press.