The soil in the classroom: a middle school case study

The Earth sciences have a relevant role in building both scientific competences and citizenship skills; nevertheless, in Italian middle and high schools these are prevalently taught with a poorly effective transmissive approach. This work presents the results of a research carried out choosing the soil as a topic and a class of 11-12 years old pupils as target, aimed at exploring the effectiveness of laboratory-based teaching on the acquisition of permanent scientific competences and on the birth of an autonomous way of learning to learn. The teaching approach used well assessed didactic instruments such as the work group, the exercise book and the sharing of observations. The results show that most pupils were able to use the acquired scientific knowledges and skills in different situations and became more aware of their own learning.