Thermodynamic Literacy for Sustainable Development: A Review of Integrating Physics Education on Resource Utilization and Environmental Awareness Cultivation

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a structured review of thermodynamic literacy in education, identifying gaps in assessment tools and systematic integration across levels.

🏛政策担当者:Useful for curriculum policymakers aiming to integrate sustainability into STEM education with quantitative rigor.

The escalating global environmental crisis demands an urgent reorientation of educational paradigms, particularly within physics instruction. Thermodynamics the fundamental science of energy, work, and entropy offers a natural and powerful bridge between abstract physical principles and concrete sustainability challenges. This review synthesizes the scholarly literature on integrating sustainable development education into physics instruction, with a specific focus on resource utilization and environmental awareness cultivation. Through a systematic analysis of 45 peer-reviewed studies spanning 2015–2025, we examine how thermodynamic literacy can transform sustainability education from aspirational discourse into quantitatively grounded decision-making. The review identifies three core contributions of thermodynamic literacy: (1) providing first-principles explanations for resource limits and efficiency boundaries via the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics; (2) enabling rigorous assessment of resource utilization through concepts such as Energy Return on Investment (EROI), exergy analysis, and entropy accounting; and (3) cultivating environmental awareness by making invisible energy flows and waste streams visible and quantifiable. We find that effective pedagogical approaches include project-based resource audits, exergy literacy integration, socio-scientific inquiry frameworks, and active learning strategies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite growing recognition of the physics–sustainability nexus, significant gaps remain: validated assessment instruments for thermodynamic literacy are underdeveloped, teacher professional development lags behind curricular ambitions, and systematic integration across educational levels is fragmented. The review concludes with a proposed framework for thermodynamic literacy development spanning cognitive, analytical, and practical competencies and offers recommendations for curriculum design, pedagogical innovation, and future research. Keywords: thermodynamic literacy; sustainable development education; resource utilization; environmental awareness; physics education; energy return on investment; exergy; entropy; second law of thermodynamics.

• Zenodo https://zenodo.org/records/20603473first seen 2026-06-10 04:17:36 · last seen 2026-06-10 04:18:19