Soil literacy as community capital

For school heads, soil literacy isn't just curriculum — it's community capital. Between budget reviews, parent expectations, and the push for "sustainable schools," you need frameworks that turn soil projects into strategic assets. This module tackles governance: how to deeply engage parents in decision-making, mobilize entire communities as partners, communicate wins and achievements to strengthen trust, and critically embed sustainability so initiatives survive leadership transitions.

To promote soil literacy through education, professional educators need to co-operate with the parents and the community, not only because it is impossible to make relevant changes in the thinking of future generations without them, but also because the ecological notion of "everything is linked to everything else" suggests such an approach. In order to achieve such co-operation, school governance must be transformed or at least modified significantly so that families and the community can become actively engaged in education policy making and school life.

Decreasing participation, especially of younger generations as active citizens, is a worldwide phenomenon. Participatory practices in schools — engaging parents, children, teachers, and others — let stakeholders experience active citizenship in a safe environment, as well as the consequences of opting out of decision-making.

Both parental engagement and child participation also have a direct positive effect on the learning outcomes of the children and also support the lifelong learning of parents and teachers.

The Curiosoil project is an excellent opportunity to change the main trend of civic/citizenship education from learning about to learning by doing. A meta-analysis study of over 13,000 scientific publications proves that students learn far better if they can experience curricular content rather than just learning about them.



This also means that teachers have three very important tasks that hopefully this MOOC can help with:

1. Understand and prepare for their role in supporting parents in general to become better educators and role models for their children as well as more active citizens, starting from school contexts,

2. Understand and prepare for their role in acknowledging child agency and providing opportunities for meaningful participation of children of all ages, and

3. Be active citizens of their own school.