Professor Ken Muir’s March 2022 report, Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education, quotes students as saying “we don’t do enough about the environment at school” and “teach more about climate change”.
Yet, at the same time, fewer students are going on to study chemistry at university.
Could a refresh of the chemistry curriculum in Scotland help to address all of the above?
More specifically, are students switched off from chemistry courses that include how we obtain fossil fuels and substances from crude oil, and how we use alkenes to make synthetic materials? Would they be more interested in chemistry if we replaced content on how we are helping to destroy our planet with content about how chemistry could help to solve the world’s problems? In Scotland’s broad general education, is there a need for the sciences “experience and outcome” SCN 4-17a (“I have explored how different materials can be derived from crude oil and their uses. I can explain the importance of carbon compounds in our lives”)?
In short, should we have less about hydrocarbons and plastics in our chemistry curricula?
We could be teaching students more about battery technologies, recycling metals from mobile phones, climate-change chemistry, measurement and control of pollutants, sustainable materials and so on.
Higher chemistry contains some content around sustainability (atom economy, percentage yield and efficiency of chemical processes), but National 5 chemistry doesn’t really encompass a sustainability and green context. Would a greener chemistry curriculum make the subject more relevant to those who don’t intend to continue studying it? Would it stop the decrease in applications to undergraduate chemistry?
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) report The elements of a successful chemistry curriculum, as well as its two-part report entitled Green Shoots: A sustainable chemistry curriculum for a sustainable planet, would be a great place to start the conversation around what a refreshed chemistry curriculum could look like. The RSC has also published various resources to support teaching about climate change and sustainability via chemistry.
Chemistry and climate change
At the same time, we should also examine how we can decolonise the chemistry curriculum in Scotland. For example, we could look at the impact of climate change on communities in the southern hemisphere, using Brazil as a context for renewable fuels (where ethanol is used in petrol); promoting the contribution of black, Asian and/or minority ethnic scientists to our understanding of chemistry; exploring the replacement of petrol and diesel vehicles with electric vehicles but also the subsequent exploitation in acquiring metals used for the batteries.
There are clear issues that would need to be addressed:
- Is knowledge of alkanes/alkenes essential to further study of organic chemistry? Is it possible to teach students about their structure, properties, reactions and so on without going into detail about where they come from?
- Addition polymerisation is a good introduction to the understanding of polymers (and a lot simpler for students to understand than condensation polymerisation) - how could we teach the more complex reactions in the production of sustainable materials?
- Are chemistry teachers in Scotland going to get adequate time and support if there are significant changes to qualifications?
The importance of this last point cannot be overstated. Recent industrial action in Scotland focused on obtaining an improved pay offer. However, working conditions are also having a huge impact on teachers’ job satisfaction.
Leaving teachers across the country to develop their own resources for a new curriculum, then, is not acceptable. Any new content should be fully exemplified and resourced, and any new essential equipment for practicals would also need to be financially resourced. A bank of centrally created and quality-assured resources that teachers can modify, coupled with any required professional development on new content, would support teachers in implementing any change.
Changes to Scotland’s national qualifications are highly likely, with the final report of the Hayward review of assessment on the way (consultation closes on 30 April), following recent reviews by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Professor Muir, so now’s as good a time as any to update the content of chemistry courses, to show our students that chemistry is relevant to their future.
We are in danger of heading into a downward spiral (if we aren’t already there): the reduction in university chemistry students means a smaller pool of graduates of potential chemistry schoolteachers. In 2022 only 48 out of a target of 159 teacher-education places in chemistry were taken up. This is worrying and there is no sign of improvement in 2023-24 or beyond.
That said, if there were to be any refresh of the chemistry curriculum, then chemistry teachers must be involved at all stages - any change should be carried out with them, rather than done to them.
Dr Colin McGill is a former chemistry teacher and now a lecturer in teacher education - specialising in chemistry - as well as PGDE (professional graduate diploma in education) programme leader at Edinburgh Napier University
