Abstract:

This paper focuses on modernising education by enhancing its content to contribute to forming a global, tolerant, and environmentally sensitive society, aligning with the Agenda 2030 objectives. Our approach involves developing teaching materials for bachelor's degree students of university education, specifically in the area of "environmental chemistry." We highlight various perspectives encountered in the educational process. The paper targets an environmental component (air) by comparing properties and monitoring pollution.

The paper aims to describe a modern and relevant curriculum for the subject "Environmental Laboratory in Primary and Secondary Education," which will help address current issues related to environmental protection. To foster education, we will develop a series of laboratory exercises for teachers, covering the following aspects:
- Monitoring the negative impacts of chemicalization on a selected environmental component (air);
- Verifying the laboratory procedures of selected experiments focused on environmental chemistry in primary schools;
- Demonstrating the impact of air pollution contaminants through simple experiments;
- Analysing the properties of the environmental component, air, and its changes.

This system aims to provide professional education and training for pre-service teachers, considering current social issues and focusing on achieving sustainable development aims.

This paper's methodology combines chemistry and environmental science, aiming to meet content requirements across both fields. It introduces innovations to environmental chemistry teaching for university students in the Chemistry Teaching Programme. In the "Environmental Laboratory for Primary and Secondary Education" course, new methods were proposed to make environmental chemistry teaching engaging and relevant, addressing current issues such as air pollution, climate change, green chemistry, the circular economy, and sustainable development. E-learning education includes both theoretical and experimental parts.

We focused on creating new didactic materials for the e-learning course and supplementary teaching materials. We provided students–pre-service teachers–with opportunities to apply their knowledge and experience through practice, such as excursions to wastewater treatment plants and visits to organisations dealing with environmental protection and sustainable development. We also prepare activities and poster sessions in collaboration with elementary school grades. The primary task was to prepare educational materials and verify them in practice so that elementary school students could develop their knowledge based on them.

Educational materials, such as chemical experiments, are divided by difficulty into demonstration experiments and pupil experiments. The experiments are further divided into three groups according to the focus on selected components of the environment, whose properties are observed and influenced by their chemical changes. The fourth group is dedicated to interesting experiments.

The proposed experiments in the e-learning course are practical tools for increasing students' interest in environmental chemistry. This work highlights the importance of integrating environmental chemistry into teacher education programmes. We introduced new approaches and didactic materials that focus on applying chemical principles to environmental issues such as air pollution and climate change.

Keywords:

Education, chemistry, meaning, environment, students.