Using systems thinking to connect green principles and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in a reaction stoichiometry module

ABSTRACT

To help students address problems related to climate change, chemistry fundamentals are taught using sustainable principles. The principles of green chemistry and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are guides to help us reach a sustainable future. Educators use these to create resources to connect green principles and sustainability goals. Systems thinking provides the method for creating relevant lectures, meaningful activities, and cohesive assessments in an educational module. A week-long stoichiometry module for introductory chemistry is described. Students tackle multiple learning outcomes to answer complex questions such as ‘what makes an reaction efficient?’. This module relates SDGs #7 and #13, clean energy and climate action, to the green principle of atom economy, which evaluates the efficiency of chemical transformations. The process of backward design is used with systems thinking to map learning outcomes across the module. Students demonstrate skills related to individual outcomes and use their knowledge to evaluate chemical systems from multiple perspectives across outcomes. Incorporating real-world examples the module explores how incomplete combustion impacts human health and the environment while exploring the material efficiency of making different fuels. The context and practice of sustainable science can be used to teach chemistry in a systematic way.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Atom economy
• clean energy
• climate action
• stoichiometry
• reaction efficiency

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute as part of the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Education Module Development Project. The authors would like to thank their subject matter expert, Grace Lasker, and assessment consultant, Elizabeth Day in addition to the program coordinators, David Laviska, David Constable, Jennifer MacKellar and Aurora Ginzberg. They would also like to thank Manhattan College’s CHEM 101 General Chemistry 1 Section 05 from Spring 2022 and the organizers of the ‘Integrating Green Chemistry and Sustainability into Chemistry Education’ session at BCCE 2022 at Purdue University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by American Chemical Society.