What Lies Behind Teaching and Learning Green Chemistry to Promote Sustainability Education? A Literature Review

Abstract

In this qualitative study, we aim to identify suitable pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning green chemistry among college students and preservice teachers by examining the teaching methods that have been used to promote green chemistry education (GCE) and how these methods have supported green chemistry learning (GCL). We found 45 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals since 2000 that specifically described teaching methods for GCE. The content of the articles was analyzed based on the categories of the teaching methods used and the revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy. Among the selected articles, collaborative and interdisciplinary learning, and problem-based learning were utilized in 38 and 35 articles, respectively. These were the most frequently used teaching methods, alongside a general combination of multiple teaching methods and teacher presentations. Developing collaborative and interdisciplinary learning skills, techniques for increasing environmental awareness, problem-centered learning skills, and systems thinking skills featuring the teaching methods were seen to promote GCL in 44, 40, 34, and 29 articles, respectively. The results showed that the integration of green chemistry teaching (GCT), e.g., with sustainable education, promoted GCL by fostering environmental consciousness and behavioral change and cognitive processes in a sustainable direction.

Teachers’ Knowledge of Green Chemistry in Senior Secondary Schools in Kwara State, Nigeria

“…Even though Chen, Jeronen and Wang [12] did a comprehensive literature review with a view to identifying appropriate pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning green chemistry among college students and pre-service teachers, the reviewed works are expository essays with focus on green chemistry learning programmes review, course designs, evaluations, instructional methods descriptions, and activity reports among others [13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…The review by [12] was carried out by inquiring into the instructional methods that were being used to facilitate green chemistry education, and how these methods have reinforced the learning of green chemistry. Forty five peer journal articles were reviewed.…”

Establishment of Green Chemistry Awareness Instrument for secondary school students

“…The existing problems related to the environment need to be solved through education because the elements contained in the curriculum enhance the country towards sustainable development in the future [8], [9]. Therefore, students should empower themselves with sustainability knowledge and understanding of the human world; to learn decision making based on ethical, social, environmental and economic issues; and to learn to act and behave in accordance with sustainable development thinking [10]. This needs a more effective education and capacity building and a much broader understanding and implementation of Green chemistry curricula at various levels, from school to university in all countries [11].…”

“…Content validations and modified kappa ,6,7,9,10,12,14,15,16,17,18,25,28,29, 33, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48,49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62,64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 …”

Adaptation of Basic Chemistry Learning with Green Chemistry Oriented

“…Many studies on green chemistry at the university level have been carried out (Mitarlis, 2016;Summerton, 2018;Paristowati, 2019;Mirzaei, 2019;Chen, 2020;Carabineiro, 2021) and other researchers. Likewise, at the SMA/MA level (Saptorini, 2014;Rosita, 2014;Afiyanti, 2014;Ahmadi, 2016;Redana, 2017;Risna, 2019;Arif, 2020) and other researchers, even at SMK (Auliah, 2018).…”