This presentation describes the milestones of four decades of Earth Science Education (ESE) research. It will describe the evolution of the ESE Group in the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. This evolution is derived from dozens of quantitative and qualitative studies and channeled into the holistic earth systems educational approach that incorporates integration of the outdoor learning environment as a central component of the learning sequence, a model for the integration of learning environments, the development of environmental insight through a holistic earth systems approach; development of a layered systems thinking model; and the notion of learning as an instinct. Integration of these components led to the development of the learning instinct theory, which contradicts the essentialist–reductionist paradigm, which still dominates universities and schools worldwide.

The holistic Earth systems approach is an effective platform for developing environmental insight. However, the low status of ESE in schools worldwide prevents the educational treatment needed to reduce environmental crises. Thus, climate change is an educational crisis. It results from the continuing failure of the environmental education paradigm that ignores the Earth systems and environmental insight approach.

The climate crisis should have been a turning point in raising the awareness of Earth Sciences as a scientific discipline and the importance of raising the profile of Earth science teaching in schools.

The academic geoscience community is a keystone for bridging the disturbing gap between the importance of Earth science to humanity and its low profile in schools worldwide.

We analyzed the curricula of the natural science teaching subjects of all federal states in Germany regarding their geoscientific content. With this information we can better address the demand of teacher trainings and provide the corresponding geoscientific topics. We can also approach the ministries of education to develop geoscience curricula for all 16 federal states as well as the national Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) in order to include geoscience education in standards for education and teacher training.

To provide a quantitative evaluation, we compared the German curricula with the International Geoscience Syllabus (IGS) and developed a classification scheme. The higher the ranking, the larger is the combability with the IGS which can be regarded as a good standard. Classification criteria are geoscientific content, education time, interdisciplinary relation to other subjects, application examples, experiments, level of guidance and grade.

The curricula in Germany are highly heterogeneous, both in their content and their level of description. Geoscience school syllabuses are available for upper secondary schools (SEKII) in Baden-Württemberg and Bayern. In these states also the teacher education and trainings have been organized during the past years. Need of improvement is especially seen for Hamburg and Niedersachsen where we found hardly any geoscientific references and also the description of the curricula is very poor.

Countries around the world are reporting a decline in student interest in geoscience careers, even as the need for trained geoscientists who can help solve global challenges in sustainability is becoming more urgent. This “geoscience crisis” is attributed to learners’ insufficient exposure to geosciences in the school curriculum, resulting from both lack of content and low teacher confidence in geoscience topics. Our team developed and studied an extracurricular programme of field excursions and mentored research to increase geoscience career interest among students who were in their first or second year of university but had not yet chosen their degree programme. Using the conceptual framework of social influence, the research team employed longitudinal surveys and interviews to examine geoscience identity and sense of belonging in the geosciences. The results showed that the programme had positive outcomes, with student geoscience identity emerging or increasing as students progressed. Field excursions led by an interdisciplinary faculty team were the pivotal component for increasing students’ belief that they could become a geoscientist and for enhancing student awareness of the importance of geosciences to society. The project affirms the critical need to increase teacher knowledge and skills to teach earth system science in field settings at primary and secondary level, well in advance of students choosing their university major. Field trip design should include activities that ask students to apply geoscience understandings to future Earth scenarios. This teaching approach reinforces for students that the geoscience profession has a role in our sustainable future.