**3. Analysis of the contest**

Unfortunately, the Italian education system does not support the teachers in this transformation, because it is still mainly based on the transmission of knowledge: most of the teachers remain anchored to a process of teaching-learning based on a transmissive approach.

The educational approach should clearly distinguish between goals and objectives, between knowledge and skills: it should be structured starting by identifying the priority skills, then the goals and, only later, the involved disciplinary objectives. Knowledge should be just a mean that allow these abilities transforming in skills.

investigation and promoting curiosity: but especially they push the student toward the research, at first guided by the teachers/experts, then gradually let to become autonomous.

Educational Tools and Methodological Approaches to Enhance Interest and to Grow Skills…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89371

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In Earth Sciences, the hands-on approach is naturally part of the teaching of petrography and paleontology, where the learning object can be manipulated, observed, studied, analyzed, and compared. On the contrary, complex phenomena, as global tectonics, earthquakes, or

It is not easy, for an "uninitiated," to appreciate the history of a rock, the dynamics of a landslide, the richness of information and connections of a stratigraphic sequence, and the beauty of a fold. Then, the teacher's task must not stop to illustrate scientifically the phenomenon of the fold, the rock in which it was formed: he must also to discover the link with Physics (temperature and pressure), Chemistry (composition of materials), and geological history (the event that formed it); he should also help to discover the fold's beauty, as if it were a masterpiece of nature.

The educational path to promote interest in Earth Sciences, and then make grow students' knowledge and skills, should pass by some steps: they may seem obvious and even trivial,

In fact, the lack of awareness toward Earth Sciences can derive from the lack of very simple tools; certainly, a part of the responsibility depends from the brittleness of teachers' knowledge, but also passion, effective educational approaches, educational tools, and even multi-

The analysis is not exhaustive [4–8]; it should be extended to the history of Italian school, characterized, from its birth, by a prevalent humanistic culture. The reason why should be analyzed more deeply, despite the presence of great Italian scientists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Fabiola Gianotti, Natural Sciences, and particularly Earth Sciences, struggle to be loved.

The tools proposed below, already experimented and monitored, are certainly not sufficient

To propose, as the first instrument of educational efficacy, the passion with which Earth Sciences should be taught could seem banal and perhaps obvious: but to excite our students in this discipline, which seems too difficult and a bit boring, we must be, in turn, teachers

But it is necessary to be aware of the discipline to be passionate about it. If we want to be able to explain the contents and to answer to the inevitable questions, if we want to go deepen and to intrigue, it is obviously necessary to master the contents. Unfortunately, in Italy, sometimes sciences teachers are not masters of the discipline because they are predominantly biologists.

to change this set-up, but they can be a valid starting point.

It is not easy to discover alone, the not always understandable beauties of geology.

faults and folds, require a different approach.

**5. The educational path**

but are instead fundamental.

disciplinary links are needed.

**5.1. Passion**

passionate of the topic.

Turning this traditional, acquired, and consolidated educational approach into a process, starting from skills, requires constant and strong commitment. If this does not happen, in everyday practice, the testing of acquired knowledge of their students seems to be the priority.

The Italian school system, with its encyclopedic content, does not facilitate the development of methodological approaches of active teaching-learning, such as problem solving, peer education, case analysis, and inquiry-based teaching-learning.

In fact, they require the teacher to abandon the traditional role of master of knowledge and transmitter of contents to become guide, collaborator, and mediator of the activities.

Earth Sciences are taught in all schools and all ages, with different levels of depth and of teaching quality. Plate tectonics and natural hazards, as volcanoes or earthquakes, are curricular topics; but people do not perceive the danger and the risk of living on the sides of a volcano, or in a seismic area, even when the area has already been affected by disastrous events in the recent past. Human memory is very short.

Many researches [1–5] have highlighted the poor skills of Italian students, in the Earth sciences field, during and at the end of their course of study, whatever is their school curriculum and level of scientific specialization. The knowledge is often superficial and fragmentary, due to the respect of the ministerial curriculum. This curriculum, in fact, although renewed in recent years, lacks of prerequisites and of coordination with other scientific disciplines, as Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, although taught by the same teacher.

Moreover, even today, even in scientific schools, it does not foresee neither the Biology, nor the Earth Sciences among the subjects of the written test in the final exam, and an inadequate knowledge does not allow the acquisition of effective and fundamental skills.
