DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsc.2018.04.003

Summary
Green chemistry emerged over the past several decades as an important component of chemical education. Many different types of educational materials have been created to teach students the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry. However, an international push towards sustainable development challenged green chemistry educators to teach students to weigh the complex factors of green chemistry and consider societal factors of sustainability. In this paper, authors reviewed courses and programs that strive to achieve these goals and assessment methods that have been used to evaluate student outcomes of green chemistry courses. The review is focused primarily on introductory university courses considering that they impact a large number of students and are challenging to modify the contents and the concepts already present in the curriculum.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
In this review were reported examples of curricula that challenge students to make decisions using complex green chemistry metrics and societal factors. The referenced literature has been analyzed describing the evolution of the curricula from 1) teaching students how to improve only one aspect of a chemical process to make it greener, to 2) enabling them to use multiple metrics to holistically assess the greenness of a chemical process, to 3) stimulating students to include larger societal factors in their analysis and to communicate their findings with non-experts. Interestingly some courses introduced a focus on a particular geographic area or presented to students selected case studies.
In addition, were refereed also a number of assessment methods to measure the outcomes of the new programs, and to identify effective green chemistry pedagogies.

Point of Strength
The most relevant aspect introduced in this review article is that the Education for Sustainable Development requires a larger green chemistry community that includes students, educators, professionals, and the public of non-experts. Programs and curricula need to be calibrated in order to create this community, considering the central role of the teachers that influence the knowledge and opinions of future generations.