Nature study, once a common component of formal education, has fallen by the wayside in today's standards-driven classrooms. To learn about natural history today, most people must visit parks, nature centers, and museums, where interpretive naturalists bear the bulk of responsibility for introducing people to natural history as well as sparking and maintaining their interest. This is a heavy burden, and one that many interpreters might resent, given that developing a deep interest in natural history is a long-term process, but most interpreters spend just minutes or hours with a visitor.
The authors of this paper follow up on two previous papers that reported on The Environmental Socialization Project, which identified the key characteristics in the life histories of natural history-oriented professionals. In this third paper, the authors offer concrete examples of ways that interpreters can help connect a single interpretive program to a participant's long-term socialization process.
The Environmental Socialization Project used in-depth interviews with 51 “highly motivated and/or exceptional field naturalists who were hobbyists, informal-setting educators, and/or professional conservationists” to identify the key factors in their environmental socialization. The researchers found five opportunities common to the natural-history enthusiasts and professionals:
• access to natural environments,
• social support,
• accumulation of environmental experiences,
• development of environmental competencies, and
• environmental identity formation.
The authors offer a range of suggestions for ways that naturalists can engage participants in each of these domains. For example, to increase access to natural environments, interpreters can: provide opportunities for free, self-directed exploration in natural areas before, after, and during scheduled programs; offer travel programs to expose people to different environments; designate areas where kids can play freely in natural settings; and create programs that help kids develop wayfinding skills so they can explore farther. Social support can be bolstered by creating programs that help create social groups through repeated interactions (such as clubs), offering social events in conjunction with learning programs, helping participants with similar interests build relationships, using online social networking tools, giving away memberships as incentives and rewards, and making participants aware of other local organizations that might be of interest to them.
To help participants build environmental competencies, some of the authors' suggestions include: providing instruction in outdoor recreation (being careful to focus on skills related to natural history and not those related to thrill-seeking adventure travel), creating positive introductions to outdoor experiences, allowing participants to check out equipment such as insect nets or bird identification guides so they can explore on their own and hone their skills, and helping participants build their tolerance for things like bad weather and getting dirty. The authors suggest that to help in the accumulation of outdoor experiences, interpreters might: provide resources so that participants can continue activities after a program ends; promote other upcoming programs, including programs at other institutions; strive to constantly offer novel activities that can keep participants returning; and offer opportunities for staff to mentor young people who have unusually deep interests in natural history.
Finally, the authors suggest a range of ideas for helping foster environmental identity formation, including: informing young people about environmental careers, serving as role models for environmental careers, and using clubs or social groups to create positive social support for kids who have a level of interest in natural history that makes them out of the mainstream in other social groups.
The authors emphasize that developing an environmental identity takes time. Although interpreters' interactions with participants might be limited, they can nevertheless play an important role in a person's longer-term development: If there is one larger concept that emerges from the environmental socialization project it is the importance of frequent and repeated experiences with nature within a supportive social world. We strongly encourage that as part of every program interpreters provide information to their audiences about how to extend the experience after the program. Just as a good interpreter develops transitions between subthemes within a program, they must also help audience members transition from program to program. We advocate for adding a formal “Program-to-Program Transition” (PTPT) component to interpretive program plans and that interpreters work to be especially cognizant of the range of local and regional opportunities for visitors to have further natural history opportunities inside and outside their organizations.
The Bottom Line
People don't develop deep and meaningful connections to the natural world overnight. Recognizing that interpretive programs are just one relatively short point of contact in a person's environmental socialization process, naturalists and interpreters should work to connect their programs to other opportunities for people to continue their development. Interpreters and program managers should also find ways to create positive social environments for people who are developing an interest in natural history. The authors of this paper argue that interpretive program plans should formally adopt this way of thinking, creating a standard transition at the end of programs that points participants to more opportunities for social or educational events that can help foster their interest in natural history.