Are you passionate about education and policy?

Join the CURIOSOIL Focus Groups and collaborate to shape regulations and policies that effectively integrate soil education into curricula.

What are the CURIOSOIL Focus Groups?

The CURIOSOIL Focus Groups are a series of national online events designed to bring together diverse stakeholders to share their knowledge and expertise about existing guidelines, regulations, and policies related to soil education at primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels.

The main objectives are to:

• Analyse to what extent soil is currently embedded in educational policies

• Identify existing recommendations to embed soil in educational curricula

• Understand the current educational design, particularly concerning soil topics

We will organise focus groups on the following countries: Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, France, Romania, Denmark, Finland, Croatia and Ukraine.

Those events will be the starting point for participation in CURIOSOIL policy activities.

When are the Focus Groups taking place?

The CURIOSOIL Focus Groups will be presented at an online meeting on the 6th March at 3:00 p.m. in a 30-minute online meeting.

The national Focus Groups will be 90-minute online meetings that will take place between March and May 2025.

We will provide more information in the coming weeks!

Who can participate?

We are especially looking for:

• Members of national education organisations

• Education policymakers

But we welcome participation from various stakeholders, also including:

• Employees from the public administration

• School-heads and teachers

• NGOs and civil society

• Soil scientists and education experts

Do not hesitate to join if you know the educational system of your country and how soil aspects are integrated into it well.

How the Focus Group will work?

Before the meeting:

• You will be invited to an online event with two or three other participants and a CURIOSOIL Consortium member.

• We will send you the preliminary analysis of the educative system for your country for you to review in advance.

During the meeting:

• We will present the main conclusions from our analysis of your country

• Then, we will have an open discussion to answer the following questions:

• What is missing or wrong in our analysis of the country’s education system and how soil is integrated? What is the state of soil education?

• What are the main critical aspects of the national educative system, educative policies and soil education that should be considered for policy making, specifically regarding the level of autonomy in curriculum development and the role of educational institutions and other key stakeholders?

• Do you know a scientific paper, national guidelines, or policy documents related to soil in your educational curriculum that we should consider as a key reference?

After the meeting:

• Results and insights generated on the Focus Groups will be compiled, shared with the CURIOSOIL consortium and integrated into our analysis…

We will organise additional workshops and conferences in each country until February 2028 to continue working on policy recommendations and regulations. We hope for your feedback and contribution to better integrate soil health into educational systems.