Science education and sustainability initiatives

Instructors at Francis Marion University developed a recycling course in an attempt to satisfy the students’ goals of increasing campus awareness about sustainability and recycling, and the teachers’ goals of using problem‐based learning approaches in class. Students enrolled in the course designed their own experiment, completed the experiment and presented the results at several national meetings. The focal point of the experiment was student apartments, where some students were provided with recycling bins, some were not, and some were provided with both bins and education about the importance of recycling. Results show that students living in campus apartments significantly reduced their waste stream when given recycling bins and some education about recycling. Although ANOVA tests showed that while the presence of recycling education did not result in significantly more recycling, students who received bins (opportunity) recycled more as time went on. Positive student feedback indicated the success of using project‐based learning to teach sustainability.

[1]  Raymond Ching,et al.  Campus recycling: Everyone plays a part , 1992 .

[2]  Edmund A. Marek,et al.  Relationships among Informal Learning Environments, Teaching Procedures and Scientific Reasoning Ability. , 2001 .

[3]  Michael Shayer,et al.  Accelerating the development of formal thinking in middle and high school students , 1990 .

[4]  P. Leroy,et al.  The role of project‐based learning in the “Political and Social Sciences of the Environment” curriculum at Nijmegen University , 2001 .

[5]  David J. Eagan,et al.  Green Investment, Green Return: How Practical Conservation Projects Save Millions on America's Campuses. , 1998 .

[6]  D. Schamel,et al.  The Minds-On Approach: Student Creativity and Personal Involvement in the Undergraduate Science Laboratory. , 1992 .

[7]  P. Tamir,et al.  Teaching basic concepts of scientific research to high school students , 1986 .

[8]  M. Krasny,et al.  Enhancing Student Understanding of Environmental Sciences Research , 2001 .

[9]  D. Orr.  The Problem of Education. , 1992 .

[10]  Teresa Arambula-Greenfield.  Implementing Problem-Based Learning in a College Science Class. , 1996 .

[11]  Anthony D. Cortese,et al.  Education For An Environmentally Sustainable Future , 1992 .

[12]  Susan B. Chaplin,et al.  Introducing Freshmen To Investigative Research--A Course for Biology Majors at Minnesota's University of St. Thomas. , 1998 .

[13]  David J. Eagan,et al.  The Campus and Environmental Responsibility , 1992 .

[14]  Robert Karplus,et al.  The Learning Cycle , 2002 .

[15]  Stuart Boersma,et al.  Student-Designed, Interdisciplinary Science Projects: Placing Students in the Role of Teacher. , 2001 .

[16]  R. Darling.  A Directed Research Project Investigating Territoriality & Aggression in Crickets , 2001 .

[17]  R. Warren Flint,et al.  Interdisciplinary education in sustainability: links in secondary and higher education , 2000 .

[18]  C. Balsas.  Towards more sustainable transportation , 2001 .

[19]  P. Lang,et al.  Critical Dimensions of Sustainability in Higher Education 1 , 1999 .

[20]  John E. Worthen,et al.  The Talloires Declaration , 1999 .