Identifying Deficiencies in the Environmental Chemistry Educational Literature

A survey of environmental chemistry laboratory experiments published during the period 1969-2000 in the mainstream chemical education journals, The Journal of Chemical Education and Education in Chemistry, was conducted. The experiments were categorized as being related to the environmental domains of air, water, or soil. Using the same timeframe, a similar survey was carried out for commonly used environmental chemistry textbooks, assessing the relative number of pages devoted to the same areas. The data obtained from both analyses indicate that the area of soil is seriously underrepresented in the environmental chemistry educational literature. This suggests a need to develop more environmental chemistry educational material (in the form of published laboratory experiments and textbook material) related to soil chemistry and soil contamination. To provide a basis for optimizing the level of integration in the design of such experiments, the publications surveyed were categorized according to how they in...