麻豆直播

Session Outline

The teaching of sustainability in lab-based courses is a still underexplored theme in the Education for Sustainable Development, and at present efforts to promote sustainability in teaching labs are frequently delegated to technical staff, with limited involvement from academic staff. Scientific laboratories generate over 5.5 million tons of single-use plastic waste annually, amounting to 2% of the global plastic waste. The implementation of green-lab principles to reduce waste often faces resistance, though, as researchers worry that reusing or recycling materials could compromise protocol reliability, yet sustainability is rarely addressed explicitly within the teaching of lab-work based courses. Sharing a culture of Education for Sustainable Development is therefore paramount to empower university students and help them mature as a future generation of environmentally conscious scientists. In this presentation, I will describe an initiative at the University of Glasgow, co-led by students, to understand how participants in lab-based work (students, academics and technicians) perceive sustainability, with the aim of identifying barriers limiting the adoption of sustainable practices in teaching labs, and evaluating pedagogical strategies to address them. Data collected through anonymous surveys and semi structured interviews identified a limited awareness of existing sustainability initiatives and a strong preference for sustainability learning embedded directly within lab practice. Concerns about experimental reliability, safety, and excessive workload emerged as the principal obstacles to the adoption of sustainable practices. In response, we propose the introduction of “green tips” integrated into lab manuals, making sustainability practices visible, actionable, and scientifically contextualised during practical work. This low-key yet highly impactful pedagogical intervention satisfies the wish of the students to have sustainability integrated into their work with real-life examples and reference to the Sustainable Development Goals while not requiring an excessive increase in workload for the academic staff. Overall, the findings indicate that teaching labs can function as effective environments for Education for Sustainable Development when sustainability is embedded in routine practice and students are engaged as active participants rather than passive recipient.

that this presentation role-models or embeds:

• Quality Education
• Responsible Consumption and Production

Presenter

Dr Emanuele Conte (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7938-8743) is a Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Glasgow and a Senior Fellow of the Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET) scheme. His research focuses on DNA replication and recombination in bacteria. Alongside his disciplinary research, his scholarly interests span Education for Sustainable Development and the enhancement of inclusivity in Higher Education, with particular attention to supporting students for whom English is a second language. He is editor of the University of Glasgow’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning blog.

Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy Values

Advance HE Professional Standards Framework

To Book

Please email events.lta@uhi.ac.uk to book a place on this event.

Accessibility

We want to make this a positive experience for all participants and hope we have met everyone’s needs in joining this event. If you have particular access needs please contact us at lta@uhi.ac.uk so we can work together to get you as good an experience as we can.

Privacy

Please read our policy on how we treat any personal information collected in relation to our events:
Data Protection Statement for Events