Structuring education around a phenomenon in science education is not a new idea. John Dewey called attention to the division between a student’s lived experiences and facts “torn away from their original place in experience and rearranged with reference to some general principle”(Dewey, 1956). Dewey believed that if the subject matter was contained within a student’s experiences (i.e., falling down, cooking pasta, having the flu, etc.), these experiences could, in turn, be used to discover said subject matter (i.e., the force of gravity, phase changes, respiratory illness). Similarly, in a proscriptive manner, more recent efforts, such as project-based learning or Ambitious Science Teaching, use a driving question/anchoring event to situate learning across a unit, which attempts to support student sensemaking (Herrington & Daubenmire, 2014; Windschitl et al., 2018). So, what events or questions can we ask students, and, while answering, help them move towards a greater understanding of the chemistry in the world around them? Both a driving question and an anchoring event center on the students’  journey of epistemic uncertainty. This would be a monumental task for higher education; supporting thousands of students in a productive way would not be easy to implement, nor productive for me to attempt. Enter green and sustainable chemistry (GSC). Organic chemistry is intimately related to the growth and birth of green chemistry; therefore, organic chemistry curricula centered around the green chemistry phenomenon have become a possibility. Any phenomenon which impacts the environment or humans is not necessarily ‘green.’ Green is a stance one has on the sustainability of some phenomenon, and something can always be made ‘greener.’ Therefore, GSC is a set of phenomena in which students are expected to have chemistry knowledge and be able to use their chemistry knowledge to make decisions about those phenomena. Students should be able to make decisions with their chemistry knowledge, such as defining problems and proposing/evaluating solutions, regarding the relationship between chemistry, humans, and the environment. Students should also be able to construct explanations about those phenomena.

So how do you incorporate GSC into a curriculum and get students to develop a casual, mechanistic explanation for the underlying chemistry? Well, generating a causal mechanistic explanation for such a phenomenon is inherently difficult, given the context. The molecular-level chemistry may be hidden beneath the many layers that a real-world example brings to the explanatory ‘table’ (Pazicni & Flynn, 2019). Furthermore, the context in which student knowledge is activated has implications for what knowledge gets activated and how that knowledge gets acted upon (Hammer et al., 2005). Scaffolding student activities may be one way to support students in activating knowledge that is productive for the given context. Prior scholarship has shown that scaffolding supports casual, mechanistic reasoning in organic chemistry (Caspari et al., 2018; Crandell et al., 2020; Graulich & Caspari, 2021); however, we do not understand nor have evidence of how scaffolding will impact student knowledge within the context of green and sustainable chemistry. Furthermore, as the complexity of the phenomena increases, the amount of information and knowledge students have available to reason with increases. This could cause an increased cognitive load on students when attempting to reason; therefore, the complexity of GSC phenomena must be considered.

Say you decide on a phenomenon, then you must determine what exactly you want students to do. One specific practice from STEM disciplines that has gained a large amount of attention in DBER literature is causal mechanistic reasoning. I specify explanations as causal mechanistic to highlight both the how and why things happen, that is, explaining how this chemical phenomenon happens (i.e., the movement of electrons) and why it happens (i.e., attraction to a partial positive region of space).

Before we can support students in developing causal mechanistic explanations, first, we must ask, do you need to have students generate a causal mechanistic explanation to make decisions about the greenness of a phenomenon? One could have students use an online tool to generate a report about the greenness of specific reactants, solvents, etc., then determine which is greener, all without thinking about the underlying scientific principles at play (Reyes et al., 2023). While such information may be useful, it depends on the subsequent use of, and application of, the knowledge gained through those online tools. If causal explanations are not formed, then a holistic view of the GSC would not be obtained, and students would miss the opportunity to link chemistry to larger contents outside of the laboratory. One way of providing students with this view of GSC is systems thinking. What is systems thinking? Well, there is no agreed-upon definition (Orgill et al., 2019). However, it lies in contrast to a reductionist perspective often taken in the natural sciences. The general idea is to think about all the parts of the phenomenon: the laboratory, the environment, the business, and the legislative bodies. This looks quite different from the historical nature of any undergraduate course—marching from one chapter to the next in a textbook. This more holistic view intrinsically involves concepts beyond those traditionally covered in undergraduate courses. However, the expertise of most graduate students and professors lies in chemistry, not complex socio-scientific issues. If the incorporation of socio-scientific issues generates discussions among students regarding race, sex, or environmental injustice, potentially harmful dialogue could significantly impact our students ability to learn. I am not saying these conversations are not important, I believe any science education should include critical analysis of science. Any chemist graduate should be asked to define chemistry and science; future chemists should ponder what they are doing and why and relate their discipline to all aspects of life. But, if these critical conversations are not supported, students could be harmed, and I do not feel comfortable ‘rolling the dice’ with students’ wellbeing.