Best Practices in Chemistry Education and around e-Waste

Call for papers for a special issue of Chemistry Teacher International concerning the theme: “Effective teaching tools and methods to learn about e-waste”

Introduction

One of the recommended outcomes from the Future Actions Committee of the IUPAC CHEMRAWN XXII conference ‘E-waste in Africa’ was to develop and share teaching materials related to e-waste. Secondary school and university chemical education is critical due to the central role that chemistry plays in sustainable development and developing new, clean technologies. Many students have cell/mobile phones and access to computers, but many may be unaware of end of life or more general life cycle considerations for such devices. Important questions regarding components in electronic devices (their origin and their fate) and ways to recycle precious metals whilst preventing environmental pollution can be addressed. We hope this special issue will serve our community by gathering and sharing educational materials on chemical aspects of e-waste. 10-12 examples for secondary school or university educators (e.g. in-class exercises, laboratory experiments) will be published. Outreach activities in this area can also be described and shared. These readily available materials will allow students to learn about e-waste from a chemical perspective and inspire educators to develop their own ideas on this important topic related to sustainable chemistry. [see project 2022-016-1-021]

These articles are invited for a special issue of Chemistry Teacher International, an open access journal, and this will allow broad dissemination in the chemical education community worldwide.

 

Invitation

We wish to publish a special issue of Chemistry Teacher International (CTI), that will contain 10 to 12 articles that describe methods and teaching tools to learn about e-waste. Preferably the article should demonstrate ways to teach high school and/or university students about the problem of and potential solutions to e-waste. This could include in-class exercises, laboratory experiments, demonstrations or other activities. The article can include calculations, schemes and illustrations to help make the method clear. The length of the article is about 5000 words. CTI will allow authors to share materials they have prepared for their own classes or outreach activities.

We would like to ask you to submit an abstract (250 words) in which you describe the approach you wish to use as the main subject of an article for Chemistry Teacher International to educate students about e-waste.

 

Procedure

Based on the submitted abstracts a committee consisting of Lidea Armeleo, Silvia Borsacchi, Fran Kerton, Robin Macaluso, Maurizio Peruzzini, Suen Popoola, Diane Purchase, Alessandra Sanson and Angela Serpe (in consultation with Editor-In-Chief, Jan Apotheker) will choose 12 abstracts. The authors selected will be invited to submit a full article.

The articles and any supporting materials will be submitted to Chemistry Teacher International (by June 30, 2023), where they will be peer reviewed, by two reviewers. This special issue is sponsored by IUPAC (Division II, Division VI, CHEMRAWN, CCE and COCI) and article processing charges will be paid by IUPAC for articles in this issue. After the completed review process, the special issue of Chemistry Teacher International will be published December 2023. Contributors will also be invited to take part in a webinar on e-waste education from a chemical perspective for the 2023 edition of the Global Conversation on Sustainability.

Please submit your title and abstract (250 words) by Monday January 9th, 2023 by e-mail to [email protected] and use the following template to prepare your abstract: DOC file.

 

SEE ALSO the resources folder on e-waste compiled by CHEMRAWN at iupac.org/e-waste/

feature img: Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash 

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