Abstract

In spite of the unquestionable role of soil in regulating countless natural processes and satisfying human demands (e.g., climate change mitigation), such relevance is virtually unnoticed. Arguably, a limited inclusion of soil science into early education is a critical driver. Accordingly, we compiled and synthesized soil science information into official textbooks provided by the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) in Chile for elementary (ES) and high school (HS) levels for the years 2018 and 2023. We detected 173 and 232 topics from 56 and 71 textbooks enclosing "soil" and among other 36 adjacent terms (e.g., ecosystem, agriculture) for 2018 and 2023. Once categorizing the data into information into the pedagogic objectives: Knowledge, comprehension, application, and others, we observed a distribution of 30.64%-32.76%; 31.79%-25.00%; 25.43%-33.19% and 12.14%-9.05% for 2018 and 2023. After weighting the data into eleven soil educational goals (e.g., soil genesis), we observed a dominance of environmental awareness concepts, where the educational goal soil degradation and protection temporally varied from 23.64% to 27.27% of core curricula, whereas a decline of similar to 52% in soil functions and similar to 47% agricultural usefulness were detected. However, a temporal overall improvement over time and more equal distribution of topics into soil science disciplines reflects an institutional concern for improving the quality of programs.