PhD defence: Into the cycle of sustainability - Fostering students’ life cycle reasoning in secondary chemistry education

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Sustainability will be an increasingly important topic in the years to come, due to depletion of natural resources, global warming and the large amount of waste that is produced by the humanity. All actors in society, including government, industry and the public need to be well-informed on issues regarding sustainability. Education is one of the instruments to engage youngsters in thinking about sustainability issues and to foster their reasoning about sustainability. A variety of skills, such as validation and justification of claims, argumentation, morality, decision making, and the ability to discuss, is considered important for future generations to deal with sustainability issues.

This dissertation describes four studies concerning teaching Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to students in secondary chemistry education to support their reasoning about sustainability in the context of bio- versus fossil based plastics. The central research question addressed is: How can secondary chemistry education contribute to the life cycle reasoning of students? Our studies give insight into the development of (initial) reasoning of students before, during and after having conducted an LCA themselves. Based on our findings, we conclude that LCA is a valuable, rich source of inspiration for designing Education for Sustainable Development. However, the educational challenge is to teach LCA in such a way that it suits secondary students’ abilities and leads to desired learning outcomes. We have formulated a set of guidelines in order to provide educational designers, practitioners and teachers with heuristics for teaching LCA in upper secondary science education.

Start date and time
End date and time
Location
Academiegebouw, Domplein 29 & online (livestream link)
PhD candidate
E.F. de Waard
Dissertation
Into the cycle of sustainability - Fostering students’ life cycle reasoning in secondary chemistry education
PhD supervisor(s)
prof. dr. W.R. van Joolingen
Co-supervisor(s)
dr. G.T. Prins
More information
Full text via Utrecht University Repository