Resumen de Survey of United States Undergraduate Chemistry Instructors’ Perspectives on Teaching Climate Change
Patrick Wilson, Tori Sayers, Melissa Weinrich
Education about the chemistry of climate change will play an important role in combating the consequences of fossil fuels and aid mitigation strategies. Chemistry instructors guide course content and will be essential in equipping students with the knowledge and skills to tackle the challenges of climate change. This study used a survey in the United States examining the perspectives of undergraduate chemistry professors on how they include climate change topics in their teaching. Over 6400 instructors were contacted at 259 institutions across the United States, resulting in a total response of 379 participants (5.9% response rate). Despite being a highly valued topic among survey participants, most respondents taught climate change tangentially or not at all. Time constraints and the standardization of their courses were communicated as the top reasons for this lack of inclusion. For instructors who did incorporate climate topics in multiple ways, they expressed more agency over their course content and interest from their students as key influences. The most common key chemistry topics that were connected to climate change were gases, solutions, and reaction chemistry. Examples of these topics include the characterization of greenhouse gases, the equilibrium reactions of ocean acidification, and the stoichiometry of combustion reactions. The personal factors collected were not discriminating factors in climate change inclusion. Development of accessible and integrable materials will be needed to bridge the gap between issues of time constraints and the incorporation of climate change educational materials in undergraduate chemistry courses.
