Teaching soil science: strategies and guarantees for the future Ense anza de la ciencia del suelo: estrategia y garantía de futuro Ensino das ciências do solo: estratégia e garantia para o futuro

The aim of the current work was to propose an approach to the interdisciplinary teaching of science that would generally increase interest in the study and knowledge of science, and more specifically in the area of soil science. The paper outlines how this pedagogical proposal was carried out in two schools, working with children studying the 5th and 6th courses of Primary Education. This was achieved through a methodological process that made it possible to both rank children s knowledge from basic to complex, and to pedagogically organise the whole action using the same procedure. The approach was used to establish the different stages of knowledge construction, whose levels were increasingly complex in terms of relationships, thereby drawing nearer to a perception of the systematic reality of the Earth and helping students to understand that soil is a natural resource that is essential to life. This paper presents qualitative information corresponding to the periods before and after the pedagogical intervention, and details how the children in the 5th and 6th grades of Primary Education at two different schools conceptualise soil. The paper also presents the way in which they perceive the relationship between soil and its immediate environment. The impact of the pedagogical proposal was assessed through comparisons between the children from the working and control groups which were based on differences in the assimilation of concepts relating to the soil system. The results clearly show that when applying the proposed educational approach, it was possible for the work groups to achieve a more complex construction of knowledge relating to the establishment and functions of the soil concept. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue hacer una propuesta metodológica de ense anza interdisciplinaria de la ciencia, que busca generar interés por el estudio y conocimiento de las ciencias en general y de la ciencia del suelo en particular. Se detalla cómo se trabajó la propuesta pedagógica en el interior de dos escuelas con ni os de 5o y 6o de educación básica, mediante un proceso metodológico que permitiera tanto escalar los conocimientos de los ni os de lo simple a lo complejo como organizar pedagógicamente toda acción con el mismo procedimiento. Así, se establecieron etapas de construcción del conocimiento cuyos niveles de complejidad fueran cada vez mayores en términos de relaciones y, por ende, más cercanos a una percepción de la realidad sistémica de La Tierra, a efecto de lograr que comprendieran que el suelo es un recurso natural indispensable a la vida. En