A system mapping activity to visualize lithium’s interconnectedness to societal and environmental aspects of the green energy transition

1 Lithium – society’s increasingly intractable element

Battery-powered electric cars and large-scale batteries to store energy generated from intermittent sources of energy (solar, wind, others) are increasingly being presented as necessary solutions to decarbonize national economies (Vakulchuk et al., 2020) and meet targets set in the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs) (Bruce et al., 2023). Nearly all batteries used for these two purposes contain a small but vital amount of lithium. There is considerable research into non-lithium-based batteries alternatives, such as sodium-ion batteries (Sada et al., 2023); but these are not currently part of the massive increase in battery manufacturing seen worldwide. Global lithium-ion battery production capacity increased ten-fold from 2016 to 2022, with the majority of this serving the largest electric car market in the world, China (International Energy Agency, 2023). Given lithium’s predicted importance for future economic security and meeting climate goals, some nations are seeking to establish a sovereign battery manufacturing sector, commencing or even re-establishing extraction of lithium deposits (Jowitt et al., 2020; Kelly et al., 2021). Australia is reconsidering its current juxtaposition of supplying the world with more than half of the world’s lithium supply (as spodumene, lithium ore), yet having little to no higher economic-value national battery manufacturing sector (Zhao et al., 2021). Nations such as Australia are well-placed resource-wise to become a critical energy mineral superpower (Bruce et al., 2021) or “electrostate” (Buckley & Pollard, 2023), as the era of petrostates starts to wane.

However, the fever pitch of “white gold” (Quijano, 2020) has deafened parts of society to important considerations central to this narrative:

1. More batteries simply means more mineral extraction (from ore and brine). Recent estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA) project that to meet ‘net zero by 2050’ globally, there needs to be >40-fold increase in current lithium extraction rates, a 20-fold increase in both cobalt and nickel, and a 3-fold increase in copper, which is already extracted from the Earth on a massive scale (IEA, 2022).

2. This enormous expansion of land extraction will take place in mostly low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), or on ancestral areas of indigenous communities, with any benefits flowing not to these communities but to societies in high-income countries. Communities in these areas find themselves fighting for already limited amounts of water and energy that are instead used for mineral extraction (Romero et al., 2012).

3. The rapidly expanding production of small- and large-scale batteries has only been matched by a modest increase in recycling capability (Mayyas et al., 2023). As such, even as technologies to recycle e-waste improve, the overall amount of e-waste is steadily increasing.

Dealing with these hard truths should be a focus of chemistry’s commitment to the planet. As the discipline recognized as the ‘central science’, it has the most potential to meaningfully connect with other disciplines and engage in a shared goal of addressing societal and industrial challenges (Gomollón-Bel & Garcia-Martinez, 2024). Articles aligned with this ethos have called for the chemistry and chemistry education community to better comprehend the ‘shared future’ (Mehta et al., 2022) humans and non-humans have on this planet in order to integrate chemistry-based solutions into sustainable living and to instill a “triple focus on efficiency, safety and circularity” (Flerlage & Slootweg, 2023, p. 1). The latter of this three would be meaningfully implementing a circular economy, managing waste that cannot be incorporated into this circular economy and thus “maximizing material circularity” (Matlin et al., 2020, p. 9). Evidence of the impact of not doing this to date is becoming increasingly clear, as the scientific community develops a better understanding of how we have “transgressed” the boundaries of our planet, as defined by the planetary boundaries framework (Rockström et al., 2009). These transgressions include changes to our atmosphere, our oceans, and the biodiversity of the planet (Matlin et al., 2022).

To understand lithium’s role in another planetary transgression, it is important to consider where the lithium comes from. Recent export figures stated 84 % of Europe’s lithium supply (Lorca et al., 2022) came from brine extraction and evaporation in Chile’s Salar de Atacama region. This region is home to several Atacameño indigenous communities, who have adapted over many generations to live in one of the driest parts of the world (Romero et al., 2012). The world’s current largest lithium mine, Greenbushes in Australia (Narins, 2017), is on the unceded lands of the Noongar/Nyungar people. And a large new lithium mine planned and approved for the Thacker Pass, in Nevada, USA, is on the traditional and unceded territory of the Pauite and Shoshone peoples (Rodeiro, 2023). As such, there are also important legal and ethical aspects relevant to land usage that cannot be easily decoupled from the environmental, social and governance (ESG) complexities (Lèbre et al., 2020) of the energy transition/e-waste issue. Thus, there is potential for the narrative of lithium-based batteries to be a rich, engrossing multi-disciplinary context, with significant socio-scientific implications, for schools, particularly in science and chemistry classrooms.

In secondary/high school curriculum worldwide, lithium and its interesting chemistry only has a minor presence. Whilst a popular demonstration previously, more recent students are unlikely to have seen lithium in its elemental form, given its hazardous nature. Perhaps they have seen an online video in which small amounts of lithium, sodium and potassium are sequentially added to water to demonstrate the relative reactivity of alkali metals down the periodic table (Markowitz, 1963). Teachers outlining relative chemical reactivities may engage students to inquire why elemental lithium does not naturally occur in nature. Students learning about the periodic table would identify it as the lightest metal. A teacher seeking to engage students with its historical context may describe how lithium was, and sometimes still is, used for the treatment of mental health (Doig et al., 1973).

Senior secondary/high school chemistry students when learning about redox reactions and electrochemistry are likely to come upon and wonder why the lithium half equation is right at the bottom (or top, depending on your representation) of the electrochemical series. Possibly here while inquiring about the design of galvanic cells, students are introduced to lithium-ion batteries, as well as their potential to catch fire and explode due to thermal runaway (Wang et al., 2012). A recent teacher demonstration was published on how to pull apart safely a lithium ion coin-cell in front of students (Maharaj et al., 2019). Some more recent examples of state and national curricula (Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority, 2022) introduce metal recycling rates and include metals as a context to envisage the circular economy, but students are unlikely to investigate in-depth the scientific and economic reasons for the currently very low recyclability (<1 %) of lithium (Swain, 2017). However, many of these curriculum topics could be covered by a chemistry teacher without having to step outside the confines of their discipline, potentially leaving their students with the mistaken perception that chemistry has little connection to ethical, economic and society aspects of our global community.

Calls to humanize (Sjöström & Talanquer, 2014) and reorient (Mahaffy et al., 2018) chemistry education have included a focus on developing systems thinking in educators and students alike, as a “holistic approach for examining complex real-world systems” (York et al., 2019, p. 2742). For several years now, many in the chemistry education community have called for, implemented and evaluated approaches to Systems Thinking in Chemistry for Sustainability (STCS) (Mahaffy et al., 2021). Advocates for more explicitly incorporating systems thinking into chemistry education (and education more broadly) have argued, among other reasons, that it enhances student cognitive and emotional capacities (Orgill et al., 2019); improves student motivation to learn (Yoon et al., 2018); focuses students on developing and demonstrating critical thinking skills (Verhoeff et al., 2008); helps students and educators interpret and unpack complexity (York & Orgill, 2024); and develops motivations to utilize their emerging chemistry knowledge when address sustainability challenges (Schultz et al., 2022; York & Orgill, 2024). In recent years, relevant research has identified relevant skills and attributes of systems thinking in chemistry (Orgill et al., 2019; Szozda et al., 2023); developed tools to support educators in modifying existing teaching approaches (York & Orgill, 2020); established approaches to assessing systems thinking in the chemistry classroom (Eaton et al., 2019; Grieger et al., 2022); and demonstrated the use of mapping techniques where students can develop and represent their systems thinking capacity (Reynders et al., 2023; Szozda et al., 2023). The latter of these – mapping – is the focus of the teaching and learning approach presented here.

Systems maps (Schultz et al., 2022), systemigrams (Sauser & Boardman, 2014), issue concept maps (Kim et al., 2020), and systems oriented concept map extension (SOCME) tools (Aubrecht et al., 2019; Matlin, 2020) are just some of the mapping approaches that purport to push students beyond utilizing a ‘simple’ concept map to systematically represent their chemistry knowledge about a real-world context. Contexts used by educators for these systems thinking-oriented maps are regularly sustainable development challenge-oriented socio-scientific issues (SSIs), such as global warming (Chiu et al., 2022), ocean acidification (Aubrecht et al., 2019), the legacy of ubiquitous use of plastic in society and industry (Schultz et al., 2022), toxicity of common laundry detergents in local water sources (Reynders et al., 2023), societal and ethical considerations impacting pharmaceutical design (Holme, 2020) and understanding enablers for a post-trash age (Matlin et al., 2020). In their maps, educators support students to connect a particular chemical product or process with how the feedstock is sourced, the intended uses of the product, and the unintended consequences of its utilization and over-utilization to the environment and society. With their understanding of social and scientific aspects systematically represented in their map, students can then better consider how chemistry could provide a solution that addresses a sustainability-oriented challenge. For example, in Kim et al. (2020) students in a Korean middle school used their issue-concept maps to systematically consider both the causes and effects of photochemical smog/dust-on personal, societal and global levels - before being prompted to devise ‘countermeasures’ to impact of this issue. In this sense, students and educators connect their disciplinary knowledge with other ‘systems’, such as environmental, legal, ethical, political and economic aspects (Talanquer et al., 2020) to better grasp their own impact on the planet and their capacity to change it.

This article presents a mapping activity, using the same ‘systems as bubbles’ employed in SOCMEs to represent the different scientific (energy/mass inputs and outputs, reaction conditions), environmental (land, aquatic, atmospheric), and societal (human, economic, political) aspects related to a chemical process or product. Static (PDF) and modifiable (PPTX) versions of the activity are provided in the supplementary information for use by secondary and tertiary educators. Any chemical process (such as the Haber-Bosch, Contact, or Solvay process) can be placed in the central process system of these maps, but the remainder of this article outlines a recent experience in which chemistry teachers attending a ‘Systems Thinking for Sustainability in Chemistry’ professional learning workshop used the mapping activity to investigate lithium, the emerging ‘electrification’ of society and industry, and lithium’s connection to e-waste.

The research objectives/questions are articulated as:

1. RQ1: When prompted, what are the scientific, environmental, societal, and human-level connections that chemistry schoolteachers infer with respect to the ‘lithium for batteries’ narrative?

2. RQ2: Reflecting on how schoolteachers responded to the original design of the mapping activity (RQ1), how should the scaffold of the mapping activity be revised in order for it to support teachers and students to make interconnections between the chemistry and these other aspects?

2 Method – implementing the mapping activity

Secondary school chemistry teachers based in New Zealand were invited by Secondary Chemistry Educators of New Zealand (SCENZ, a national organization supporting chemistry schoolteachers) to attend one of four workshops held in different cities in April 2023. The 4-h interactive workshops included presentations from one or more speakers on an introduction to STCS (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, n.d.), teaching and learning approaches to incorporating socio-scientific issues into the chemistry classroom, and a case study of the emerging role of lithium in addressing climate change challenges. The workshop also included a practical activity on making a battery from household aluminium foil, analogous to metal-air battery technologies (Schultz & Delaney, 2021). In the last hour, a session was dedicated to small groups of schoolteachers (2–3) using a provided scaffold to map scientific, environmental, social and human level aspects of the ‘lithium for batteries’ narrative, as can be done with SOCMEs and the other mapping approaches outlined above.

The schoolteachers were provided with a series of previously designed and evaluated sequential prompting questions to aim them in construction of their maps (Schultz et al., 2022, p. 14). These are provided in the supplementary information and not repeated here. The teachers were given a printout of a chapter on metal recycling and e-waste (which included a life cycle analysis of aluminium) from a popular Australian year 11 (16–17 year old students) chemistry textbook which was not known to the New Zealand-based teachers. Some also used their own laptops and mobile devices to research lithium-related topics.

The original blank ‘systems’ scaffold provided to the teachers (Figure 1) was based on a multiple systems diagram previously presented by Matlin (2022). Each group had approximately 40–50 min to fill in their map response, followed by 10–15 min post-discussion to reflect on the mapping activity’s applicability to their chemistry classrooms. The groups were not formed in any systematic way. Rather they were natural groups of two-three people sitting together at their workshop table. The workshop leaders mingled in and around the tables while the teachers worked together and were careful not to induce the teachers to respond in any specific manner, so the maps could be interrogated to address RQ1 (described below).

Figure 1:

Original blank scaffold as presented to the teachers for the group-based mapping activity at the NZ STCS workshops.

To address RQ1, the workshop leaders created Figures 2, 3, and 4. These figures present the cumulative typical responses from the participants. In generating the figures, we varied font size and weight to represent the relative frequency with which a phrase or expression was present in the workshop participants’ maps, similar to a word cloud analysis of participant responses (McNaught & Lam, 2010). Phrases/expressions that appeared most frequently (>40 %) are presented in the biggest and darkest font. Those that appeared least frequently (<15 %) are presented in the smallest and lightest font. Those appearing in 15–40 % of the maps are presented in intermediate sized and weighted font. Whilst not as quantitative as other forms of content analysis, recent research has suggested this approach can provide insight into the respondents’ perspectives on an overarching issue (Chen et al., 2021). Figures 2, 3, and 4 also show arrows, included when at least one of the collected map responses included an arrow (with direction indicated) between two statements. As has been seen in previous analyses of systems maps (Eaton et al., 2019) and SOCMEs (Reynders et al., 2023), these arrows indicate how respondents infer connections between and within systems over an overall process or issue.

Addressing RQ2 required taking a more pragmatist and participant-centric approach to analysis (Wheeldon & Faubert, 2009), in that the meaning of the maps can be inferred from how and what the teachers chose to include in their maps. This was supported by an open evaluative post-activity discussion with the teachers on how they chose to respond to different parts of the map. The teachers were prompted to orally discuss both between themselves and with the workshop leaders (i) what they liked/disliked about the mapping activity, (ii) how they might reframe the scaffold to make it more useful for their own classroom, and (iii) and how they might approach using this mapping activity for assessment purposes. As such, how the teachers responded to the mapping activity and the post-activity discussion informed the revision of the mapping activity scaffold to the version included here in the supplementary information. The revision process is described in detail in the Results section.

The workshops were financially supported by a grant from IUPAC and in-kind contribution from the Secondary Chemistry Educators of New Zealand (SCENZ), who organized each workshop. At the workshop, teachers provided consent for the collection of non-identifiable group responses to workshop activities (including the map responses) and an anonymous post-workshop evaluation survey that was used by SCENZ for reporting purposes only. A total of 16 maps prepared by 39 participating teachers were collected across the workshops. Demographic information about the teachers was not collected for research purposes, but an ‘icebreaker’ activity at the start of each workshop indicated that teachers came from a mix of government and independent schools reflective of the New Zealand (NZ) context, teaching both junior (Science) and senior (Chemistry) secondary subjects from NZ’s Science/Chemistry curriculum. At the time of the workshops (2023), NZ’s national curriculum was under review, with a draft curriculum being piloted in some schools. Local curriculum experts had made calls to include an increased focus on systems thinking in the new science and chemistry curricula (Tolbert, 2023), which was the primary reason SCENZ sought to organize and financially support teachers to attend the STCS-oriented workshops.

3 Results - teacher responses to the mapping activity

3.1 Supply, product, and disposal systems

Figure 2 presents the chemical process at its center, surrounded by the Supply system (mass and energy required for the process), the Product system (mass and energy produced by the process) and the Disposal system. First, it should be noted the ‘chemical process’ presented here is conflated, as it presents the processing of lithium ore/brine and the refining of resultant product to a useful lithium substance (often lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide for use in batteries) as one step, when in fact it is many (Stamp et al., 2012). However, as the overall aim of the mapping activity is to have the respondents make connections between the chemistry and the social, environmental and economic aspects, this albeit over-simplification allowed the participants to focus on the different systems. If a mapping activity was used for a different chemical process (for instance the Haber-Bosch process, the Contact process), we would suggest employing the same approach, in order for the focus on the bigger picture of the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of a process. In the three paragraphs that follow, we will briefly describe some of the concepts that included in the Supply, Product, and Disposal systems of their maps, respectively.

Figure 2:

Cumulative participant responses (N = 16) for the supply (energy and mass input), product (energy and mass output) and disposal systems of the mapping activity, with font size and weight representing the frequency of the response.

The teachers’ maps all identified the initial sources of the lithium (it had been a focus of the workshop presentation) and considered the different energy requirements (sourced from renewable or non-renewable energy production) for the processing of the lithium from ore (as spodumene) or from brine in evaporation pools. As chemistry teachers, their researching during the time provided often led them to the chemistry aspects of the lithium narrative, for instance the use of sulfuric acid to chemically process the crushed rock (Simate & Ndlovu, 2014), and the use of different salts added to the lithium brine to ‘precipitate out’ other ions (e.g., removing Mg²⁺ by adding Ca(OH)₂ and removing the resultant Ca²⁺ by adding Na₂CO₃) (Stamp et al., 2012). Teachers included in their ‘inputs’ the need for water in the process, and the mining and processing of other metals needed for battery manufacturing. This demonstrated that the respondents interconnected the increase in lithium extraction with a corresponding increase in the extraction and sourcing of other metals. This was perhaps also mentioned because New Zealand, similar to Australia, still has an existing energy-intensive aluminium refining industry. Teachers were very aware of the energy requirements for electrolytic refining of bauxite to produce aluminium; 10–15 % of all electrical energy generated in New Zealand is for its Tiwai Point aluminium smelter (Walmsley et al., 2014).

However, as was evident from the maps collected and from talking to them afterwards, the teachers struggled with what to include in the Product system (mass and energy output). More teachers wrote ‘batteries’ as a mass output compared to those that wrote ‘cathode-ready lithium’ (or words to that extent). Equally, most teachers wrote ‘electricity’ as an energy output, when it was clear from this and their ‘batteries’ response they were referring to the application of lithium (in battery production) rather than lithium being a product of the chemical process in the center of their map. The respondents regularly included human uses of the lithium in their Product system, instead of where we originally intended, the Human system (see Figure 4). This led to a redesign in the revised scaffold, described below.

The respondents provided a range of responses in the Disposal system, which suggests the recent curriculum inclusion of recycling and the concepts of reuse, repurpose, recycle in their chemistry classroom is starting to bear fruit. For their maps, teachers found statistics relating to metal recycling rates (Graedel et al., 2011) and examples of disused electric car batteries being repurposed (Bobba et al., 2018). While the respondents noted lithium has a very low recycling rate, many other components of batteries are recycled at high rates, and since lithium is only a small amount of the overall battery, some batteries can be considered as having high recyclability. In their research, several teachers found examples of ‘urban mining’, where materials from e-waste are recovered, processed and reused in the supply chain (Murthy & Ramakrishna, 2022) and expressed a keenness to explore this further with students in their own classrooms. What teachers didn’t find easily (at least within the time provided) was what happens to the by-products of extraction and refining of lithium, for example the unwanted salts from the brine/ore processing, nor what happens to low-value acid-treated rock left-over from lithium extraction (Simate & Ndlovu, 2014). A number of teachers expressed concern that this aspect of the lithium narrative was less visible to the public.

3.2 Land, atmospheric and aquatic systems

Figure 3 presents the amalgamated responses for the Land, Atmospheric, and Aquatic Systems. In the three paragraphs that follow, we briefly outline what the teachers included in the Land, Atmospheric, and Aquatic systems on their maps.

Figure 3:

Cumulative participant responses (N = 16) for the land, aquatic and atmosphere systems of the mapping activity, with font size and weight representing the frequency of the response.

In the Land systems on their maps, respondents represented the impact of lithium extraction and e-waste in a number of interconnected ways. All maps mentioned mining, which was not surprising, and they linked this to the Supply system (Figure 2). Most maps also mentioned deforestation and the large land use necessary for the evaporation ponds, no doubt inspired by photography of the colorful Salar de Atacama pools (Hegen, n.d.), which were shown earlier in the workshop. Teachers found it easy then to link these to environmental aspects, including the impact on clearing of vegetation and depletion of arable soils, and the resultant damage to ecosystems, including a reduced biodiversity and loss of habitat (Sonter et al., 2020). Teachers researching the topic found articles on how lower population levels of flamingoes in the high-altitude wetlands of the ‘lithium triangle’ (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) is indicative of the impact of lithium extraction in the region (Gutiérrez et al., 2022). Teachers also made the connection that the e-waste from the increased battery usage has to be stored somewhere, and this has an impact on the availability of livable land.

In the Atmospheric system of their maps, teachers represented a large increase in anthropogenic emissions due to lithium, principally because mining was perceived as a pollution-intensive industry (Azadi et al., 2020). Not mentioned was the connection that if mining could be less-polluting – and recent efforts of the mining industry have focused on this (Kalantari et al., 2021) – then overall greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced overall. However, a few teachers did include in their maps the potential positive impacts on the atmosphere, namely electric cars and other forms of transport not being reliant on fossil fuels for mobility, and how an increase in metal recycling reduces the need for mining and thus could result in lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

As seen previously in Figure 2 and in the Aquatic systems of their maps, these chemistry teachers included representations regarding what happens to the acids used in chemical extraction processes, linking this to acid rain. The connection was not well explained, suggesting that the teachers included this topic perhaps only because acid rain is a common chemical science topic for secondary/high schools. The majority of teacher maps included ocean acidification in their Aquatic system, linking this as well to a negative impact on aquatic ecosystems. The most common included statement in the Aquatic system referred to the large water requirements of both the ore and brine extraction process. The respondents demonstrated awareness that since many of these extraction sites are in very dry, arid regions (Atacama desert, inland Western Australia), the use of water for extraction inevitably increases the problem of water scarcity for local communities and non-human species (Lorca et al., 2022; Silva de Lima et al., 2023).

3.3 Societal and human systems

The inequity of access to water and energy was a common feature seen in the Societal and Human systems, shown in Figure 4. In the two paragraphs that follow, we highlight some of the main entries teachers made to the Societal and Human systems of their maps.

Figure 4:

Cumulative participant responses (N = 16) for the human (needs and uses) and societal systems of the mapping activity, with font size and weight representing the frequency of the response.

Having represented the large use of water elsewhere in their systems prompted the teachers to represent this water usage in the Societal systems of their maps. A smaller number of respondents also linked this to an impact on human health and an impact on the freedoms of indigenous cultures (Uji et al., 2023). Respondents included statements regarding the inequality faced by communities living near mining sites (Rodeiro, 2023) and the lack of political recognition for the rights of indigenous communities (Uji et al., 2023). Some teachers also included impacts on non-human species, linking this back to their Land and Aquatic systems, where they had identified habitat loss and damage to ecosystems. However, most respondents indicated something with respect to mining/mineral extraction leading to economic security in the Societal systems of their maps.

With regards the Human system (including human needs and uses), the teachers used their research time to find many obvious and less obvious uses of lithium, categorizing these (not consistently it should be said) as a ‘need’ or a ‘use’ using the prompt. Feedback from the teachers suggested this distinction was not obvious/nor necessary. Almost all teachers listed phones, electric cars, and batteries. As described above, teachers were unsure whether to list ‘batteries’ as a mass output of the Product system or here in as a Human need/use, which led to changes in the revised version of the mapping scaffold. Several teachers thought to list ‘food production’ in the Human system, in line with research initiatives highlighting the importance for educators to better demonstrate chemistry’s contribution to food security (Mehta et al., 2022). E-cigarettes/Vaping was an issue listed by several teachers, linking this to lithium’s impact on human health. This is a very recent issue facing secondary schools, where vaping has become popular in young populations (Watts et al., 2022), and thus an important disciplinary issue for schools (Baker & Campbell, 2020).

In the post-activity discussion, teachers verbalized that filling in the Societal and Human systems helped the comprehend the complexity of relationships between human security and economic security (Matlin, 2022). For example, different teacher groups used their maps to argue that we as a society are somewhat caught in Jevon’s paradox (York & McGee, 2016); there will be less battery waste because newer, easier to recycle batteries will replace inherently unrecyclable batteries, but there still overall more battery waste because of the massive increase in new battery-powered devices (Murthy & Ramakrishna, 2022).

4 Discussion – post-activity evaluative discussion and revision of Scaffold

With respect to RQ1, it was evident from the responses across Figures 2, 3, and 4 that the scaffold enabled the respondents to connect the chemistry and narrative of the lithium extraction/e-waste issue with different environmental, economic and societal aspects. Not all teacher maps were substantial, but this was likely because the time provided for the teachers was minimal (40–50 min plus post-activity reflection). In a real class setting this activity might occur in segments across 3–5 lessons, with students given the opportunity every now then to add new knowledge to their map as they acquired it across a curriculum topic.

Looking across the breadth of the mapping activity responses collected, teachers were able to incorporate environment-oriented real-world contexts that they would typically utilize in their chemistry classroom (because they are present in their state/national curriculum), such as carbon dioxide/greenhouse emissions from fossil fuel use, ocean acidification, and renewable and non-energy energy. We were pleased to see that the mapping activity then provided the participants an avenue to extend their representation of the environmental implications, particularly with respect to land use (for example, deforestation due to mining, increased land required for mining waste and e-waste). Equally so, it was evident that the mapping activity facilitated participants to make further connections to the social, economic, and ethical implications of increased utilization of lithium-based products (batteries), such as the impact on non-human species (land and aquatic) through human activity, and the inequity of access to arable land, water and energy for certain communities, often indigenous, exacerbated by the green energy transition. Whilst the mapping responses were somewhat chaotic and inconsistent across individual responses, it gave each participant a powerful visual that they could use to justify an evaluation of the sustainability of lithium’s role in the green energy transition, based not just on environmental reasons, but on social, ethical, and human-level reasons as well.

With respect to RQ2, it was apparent that teachers could make connections between systems, but aspects of the scaffold in fact limited the types of connections they wanted to make. A number of teachers noted that while the original scaffold had a focus on human outputs (needs, uses), it lacked the capacity to list human inputs (labor force, community roles). As described above, there was also a misunderstanding on where to list mass and energy outputs. If the mass/energy was an intended outcome, the feedback from teachers is that this would be better represented as going directly into a human need/use system box. If the mass/energy was an unintended consequence, such as a by-product or the accumulation of waste/e-waste material with an insufficient material circularity in and out of the central Process system, it should still be represented as a mass or energy output, but then the respondent should then use arrows to link these unintended consequences to other systems, such as the Disposal system (can it be recycled/repurposed/reused, or does it enter landfill), Planetary system (impact on the environment) or Societal system (impact on human health, economic security, community rights, laws/regulations for environmental protection etc.).

The teachers discussed whether the various societal systems should be represented separately (economic, ethical, political, legal etc.) but here the teachers felt uncomfortable to define the boundaries of these separate systems (and perhaps this critical self-reflection itself serves as evidence of their emerging systems thinking capacity), so they suggested to have a single box where students could write statements and then consider how best to make connections within this overarching ‘Societal’ system. Based on this feedback, Figure 5 shows the revised scaffold.

Figure 5:

Revised blank scaffold following teacher feedback, as presented in the supporting information.

5 Limitations of the study

Demographic information about the participating teachers (school type, years of classroom experience, teacher qualification, etc.) was not collected for research purposes, nor were the authors involved in recruiting participants, so it cannot be categorically stated that how teachers responded to the mapping activity in the workshops can be generalized to the larger NZ chemistry schoolteacher cohort, or indeed to other countries. Teachers worked in groups to respond to the activity, so also each map may not be reflective of individual teacher perspectives or knowledge about the topic of lithium, electrochemistry, metal recycling and so on. A larger mixed methods study where teachers were surveyed and/or interviewed individually would have also likely provided more insight into if and how they would implement this mapping activity (or a mapping activity on a different systems thinking-oriented, chemical science-relevant real life context) in their own classroom. Lastly, it should be acknowledged that the revision of the mapping activity scaffold was based on how teachers responded to what is ultimately an activity designed for students. It is unlikely school-age students would respond to the same depth and breadth as the teachers, who no doubt were also drawing upon their own lived experiences engaging with economic, political and social aspects of the green energy transition. Therefore, the results of the study presented here are better interpreted as providing insight into the myriad ways students might respond in each ‘system’ box of the mapping scaffold. A focus of future work is to evaluate this activity with school-age students, which may lead to a further refinement of the mapping scaffold. For now, the mapping scaffold has been provided as an editable version in the supplementary information, should educators wish to modify it themselves before using it with their own students.

6 Conclusion – implications for teaching

The mapping activity as implemented in the teacher workshops provided interesting insights into how the teachers connect the ‘chemical content’ of lithium extraction/e-waste issue with how this context more broadly impacts society and the global environment. The teachers at the workshops responded positively when asked if they would implement this mapping activity (or a similar one) in their own classrooms, but acknowledged they would likely provide a longer period of time for students to develop their mapping response, perhaps over multiple lessons or settings. Several teachers suggested that students could also add to the mapping activity response across the duration of a set of lessons on a particular curriculum topic, as more economic, ethical, environmental and economic aspects became apparent to them in their learning.

In terms of using this scaffold for a summative assessment, it is unclear if the number of statements and links between statements would be a reliable measurement of student knowledge, or for that matter, systems thinking capacity. Recent publications have suggested mapping activities could possibly measure systems thinking capacity if structured sufficiently (Reynders et al., 2023; Szozda et al., 2023), but we believe this scaffold activity is more useful for formative assessment or as a scaffold for student inquiry. For example, small groups of students could first develop their own response, and then as a class the teacher and students could add more connections between the responses from different groups, perhaps in a shared online document to create a shared map. Such a shared map, similar to those presented across Figures 2, 3, and 4 could more insight into student thinking than any one map response.

We believe the advantage of this scaffold is that it challenges students to connect any chemical product or chemical process (our example here is lithium and its increasing contribution to e-waste, but others could have been used) with the ways that humans interact with their environment, be it an environmental/economic aspect (planetary environment, land and water use, economic security) or a societal/ethical aspect (Useful products, laws/regulations, human and non-human security). Capacity for systems thinking is demonstrated when respondents make links between these systems, rationalize how decisions for the benefit of one system can impact (positively or negatively) another system, and visualize the ‘bigger picture’ context of chemical systems. Using this scaffold can allow both students and teachers to see that the level of sustainability in a chemical process or product can be seen as an emergent property of the entire system (Mahaffy et al., 2019). Based on the teacher responses, the emergent property most evident here is that human and non-human species are not benefiting equally from the increasing extraction of lithium for battery manufacturing, and that lithium currently is making an unsustainable increase to the global e-waste issue.