Caves and Their Educational Dimensions: A State-of-the-art Review of Research and Practices Related to Karst

Abstract This article presents a state-of-the-art review of Brazilian and international studies addressing educational strategies and practices related to karst. The study adopts a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory approach, examining book chapters, journal articles, theses, dissertations, conference proceedings, and documents retrieved from Google Scholar, Scopus, and ERIC databases. This analysis was complemented by a qualitative–quantitative investigation of national educational projects, either ongoing or completed but not yet published. The research aimed to understand how these initiatives contribute to meaningful educational processes, with particular attention to interdisciplinarity and place-based education. A total of 109 publications and 10 educational projects were analyzed. Based on this corpus, analytical categories were established and eight thematic axes were defined, enabling comparisons across aspects such as country of origin, geographic scale, objectives, types of experiences, development of teaching materials, and pedagogical approaches. The results reveal patterns, convergences, and differences among the studies, highlighting interdisciplinarity and place-based education as key theoretical–methodological frameworks. The analysis also distinguishes between projects grounded in well-defined pedagogical frameworks and those characterized by less systematized practices, as well as identifying initiatives that explicitly incorporate interdisciplinarity and place-based approaches. Overall, the study provides a comprehensive overview of the field over the past three decades, identifying gaps and opportunities for future research, particularly regarding the need for systematic learning assessment processes and stronger integration between theoretical foundations and pedagogical practices.