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Motivating Participation in National Park Service Curriculum-Based Education Programs

ABSTRACT The authors explored barriers and motivations associated with high school and middle school classes’ participation in National Park educational programming through interviews with school administrators and surveys with teachers within the immediate vicinity of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although teachers commonly cited financial barriers to participation, administrators suggested that these were rarely insurmountable. Moreover, perceptions of such constraints did not help to predict teachers’ intentions to participate. Rather, teachers’ intentions to participate were most strongly predicted by their degree of comfort with relating park programs to the subject matter of their courses, their perceptions regarding whether or not the programs will enhance students’ academic achievement, and their expectations of whether the programs will expose students to environmental themes in an enjoyable manner. Results suggest the importance of classroom visits and direct communications with teachers emphasizing that programs are fun, relevant learning experiences that address academic requirements for multiple subjects and are relatively easy to incorporate into pre-existing curricula.