Call for papers for a special issue of Chemistry Teacher International concerning the theme: “From Concept to Classroom: Success Stories of Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education”
Building upon the successes of two IUPAC projects (project 2017-010-1-050, project 2020-014-3-050), with a third now underway (project 2025-004-2-041), chemistry has started adopting systems thinking, broadening its approach to sustainable development beyond the boundaries of green, sustainable, and circular chemistry, in both education and industry. Integrating systems thinking tools into existing chemistry curricula offers a powerful means of preserving the strengths of traditional teaching methods, while more effectively preparing students to apply their chemical knowledge toward interdisciplinary challenges. These approaches help learners address complex issues related to human and ecological well-being, as well as broader concerns of planetary justice.
With this special issue, it is our sincere hope to highlight and provide international exposure to 10-15 examples of authentic and exemplary systems thinking-oriented teaching and learning approaches (e.g. in-class exercises, laboratory experiments, realworld industry engagement). These could be situated at any education level, including secondary/high school, higher education, primary education, teacher education, or professional development in industry
Invitation
These articles will be published in a special issue of Chemistry Teacher International (CTI), an open access journal, offering broad dissemination in the chemical education community worldwide.
As examples of good practice, the articles should describe an activity (or activities) with clearly defined educational goals, research questions, hypotheses, or specific learning objectives and their assessment. It should demonstrate a sound methodological design and describe how it was successfully implemented in its original setting, and preferably it could also describe how it could be suitably modified for implementation in other settings relevant to international readership.
Each article and supporting material provided by authors will inspire educators to develop their own ideas on this important context.
Things to consider for your potential manuscript
The special issue of CTI will contain 10 to 15 articles that describe methods and teaching tools to integrate systems thinking into chemistry education. Preferably the article should demonstrate ways to develop the systems thinking capacities of students, which are integral to addressing sustainable development challenges in society. The implementation can be demonstrated at one or more education levels (higher education, secondary, primary, teacher education).
Learner engagement could include in-class exercises, laboratory experiments, projects, demonstrations, or other activities. Representative calculations, schemes, visualisations, Systems-Oriented Concept Map Extensions (SOCMEs) and illustrations are encouraged to facilitate reader understanding of the methods and assessments used. The maximum length of the article is 5000-6000 words.
Procedure
We kindly request that you first submit a proposed title and abstract (250 words) by email by November 30th, 2025, in which you describe the topic and approach you wish to use in your article for the CTI to educate chemistry students and teachers about systems thinking. Please don’t hesitate to email the guest editors beforehand to discuss and decide your approach. Based on these submitted abstracts a committee consisting of Dr Seamus Delaney (Australia) and Prof Jane Wissinger (United States of America), in consultation with Editor-In-Chief, Prof Mustafa Sözbilir, we will choose 10-15 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 May 30, 2026), where they will be peer reviewed, by two reviewers.
This special issue is sponsored by IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education (via project 2025-011-1-050) and with financial support also from the International Organisation of Chemical Sciences in Development, IOCD).
Please submit your title and abstract (250 words) by November 30th, 2025.
Guest Editors:
– Seamus Delaney s.delaney@deakin.edu.au
– Jane Wissinger jwiss@umn.edu
Announcement published in Chem Int Oct 2025, p. 36