Engaging Preuniversity Students in Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment in Upper-Secondary Chemistry Education: The Case of Polylactic Acid (PLA)

This article reports about a lesson series that focuses on engaging students in sustainability, plastics, and life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of the lesson series is to give students insights into sustainability in the context of plastics and to foster awareness of and insights into the benefits of the LCA method. The lesson series introduces students to sustainability by enabling them to watch a video, answer questions, read articles, conduct laboratory experiments, and experience the four stages of LCA. In general, the findings reveal that the lesson series evoked in students a more critical view of the life cycle of plastics. The students showed increasing awareness of the complexity of the sustainability issue at hand. In addition, students used their acquired knowledge about LCA and mentioned impact categories in their argumentation. The lesson series evoked predominantly life cycle thinking, and the qualitative part of an LCA, and might thus serve as a stepping stone toward the quantitative assessment. The preliminary results show that the lesson series is effective for evoking life cycle thinking among students and serves as a stepping stone towards life cycle assessment. Future research could focus on setting the goal and scope of the process to be assessed, with emphasis on the functional unit in the context of plastics, and providing students a complete and coherent understanding of the entire cycle of production, use and recycling of plastics

An Activity-Based Instructional Framework for Transforming Authentic Modeling Practices into Meaningful Contexts for Learning in Science Education

One of the challenges of science education is to integrate activities, content, and tools in a meaningful manner. One way to address this challenging goal is the transformation of authentic scientific practices into contexts for learning, in line with sociocultural activity theory. In this respect, authentic scientific practices are interpreted as the totality of human work situated in society. Within such authentic scientific practices, the activities, content, and tools are connected logically and the relevance is clear among its participants. This study presents an activity-based instructional framework that assists educational designers in transforming authentic scientific practices for the population of students in science education. The activity-based instructional framework has been dialectically constructed with the design and classroom enactment of a curriculum unit based on an authentic chemical modeling practice. The curriculum unit was developed through a participatory design process that took teachers' expertise into account. The pedagogical decisions were abstracted in design guidelines. The curriculum unit was implemented multiple times in classroom to evaluate the design guidelines. Research data were collected by means of audio-taped discussions, completed worksheets, and written questionnaires. The findings supported the potential of transforming authentic scientific practices to achieve meaningful science education

Scope, nature and progress of impact in practice-oriented educational research: a conceptual and empirical substantiation

Practice-oriented educational research is renowned for its impact, both in educational practice and research. Yet, existing studies on the impact of practice-oriented educational research reflect a proliferation of ideas on what impact is, can or should be. This study aims to contribute to an in-depth understanding by establishing a theoretically informed and empirically substantiated conceptualisation of the impact of practice-oriented educational research. Based on current literature, a tentative conceptualisation in the dimensions scope, nature and progress, representing the who, what and when of change, is proposed. The tenability and completeness of this conceptualisation is subsequently investigated in a qualitative empirical study. Based on interviews, individual reflections and small-group discussions, the impact of 10 purposefully selected practice-oriented studies in secondary STEM-education in the Netherlands is compared to the tentative conceptualisation of impact. This results in an empirical substantiation and extension of the tentative conceptualisation. The presented conceptualisation of impact of practice-oriented educational research in terms of scope, covering educational practice and research within the context of a study or beyond, nature, including conceptual, instrumental and symbolic change, and progress, comprising sustainability, timeframe, and stability of change, can facilitate and focus discussions, considerations and analyses of the impact of practice-oriented educational research

Effect of Trichloroethylene on the Competitive Behavior of Toluene-Degrading Bacteria

The influence of trichloroethylene (TCE) on a mixed culture of four different toluene-degrading bacterial strains (Pseudomonas putida mt-2, P. putida F1, P. putida GJ31, and Burkholderia cepacia G4) was studied with a fed-batch culture. The strains were competing for toluene, which was added at a very low rate (31 nmol mg of cells [dry weight](−1) h(−1)). All four strains were maintained in the mixed culture at comparable numbers when TCE was absent. After the start of the addition of TCE, the viabilities of B. cepacia G4 and P. putida F1 and GJ31 decreased 50- to 1,000-fold in 1 month. These bacteria can degrade TCE, although at considerably different rates. P. putida mt-2, which did not degrade TCE, became the dominant organism. Kinetic analysis showed that the presence of TCE caused up to a ninefold reduction in the affinity for toluene of the three disappearing strains, indicating that inhibition of toluene degradation by TCE occurred. While P. putida mt-2 took over the culture, mutants of this strain which could no longer grow on p-xylene arose. Most of them had less or no meta-cleavage activity and were able to grow on toluene with a higher growth rate. The results indicate that cometabolic degradation of TCE has a negative effect on the maintenance and competitive behavior of toluene-utilizing organisms that transform TCE

Strategies to support teachers' professional development regarding sense‐making in context‐based science curricula

The aim of this study is to develop more understanding about strategies to support teachers' professional development in curriculum innovations, in which pedagogy and content change simultaneously compared to the conventional curriculum. A pre‐existing framework, including strategies for professional development, was adapted, implemented, and evaluated from the perspective of teachers' sense‐making in teaching context‐based science curricula. This framework guides the design of activities that support teachers' development in three new aspects of teaching context‐based science units: setting a context in class, performing a new teaching role, and teaching new content. In a case study, six teachers in secondary education participated in a professional development program based on the adapted framework. A qualitative inner‐case analysis was conducted to describe teachers' sense‐making during the program, in terms of the categories “assimilation,” “accommodation,” “toleration,” and “distantiation.” Results showed that teachers participating in the professional development program successfully assimilated and accommodated all three aspects; however, the process of teachers' sense‐making of the new content followed a different path compared to the processes of the other aspects. The relation between these results and the adapted framework are discussed to retrieve strategies for planning professional development programs to support teachers in curriculum innovations

Engaging Preuniversity Students in Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment in Upper-Secondary Chemistry Education: The Case of Polylactic Acid (PLA)

This article reports about a lesson series that focuses on engaging students in sustainability, plastics, and life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of the lesson series is to give students insights into sustainability in the context of plastics and to foster awareness of and insights into the benefits of the LCA method. The lesson series introduces students to sustainability by enabling them to watch a video, answer questions, read articles, conduct laboratory experiments, and experience the four stages of LCA. In general, the findings reveal that the lesson series evoked in students a more critical view of the life cycle of plastics. The students showed increasing awareness of the complexity of the sustainability issue at hand. In addition, students used their acquired knowledge about LCA and mentioned impact categories in their argumentation. The lesson series evoked predominantly life cycle thinking, and the qualitative part of an LCA, and might thus serve as a stepping stone toward the quantitative assessment. The preliminary results show that the lesson series is effective for evoking life cycle thinking among students and serves as a stepping stone towards life cycle assessment. Future research could focus on setting the goal and scope of the process to be assessed, with emphasis on the functional unit in the context of plastics, and providing students a complete and coherent understanding of the entire cycle of production, use and recycling of plastics