Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Access to high quality environmental education may be particularly critical for expanding children's learning environments and re-establishing awareness of the connection between human well-being and the environment. Virginia Tech will conduct a study to identify the program characteristics that produce the most positive outcomes for youth participating in environmental education fieldtrips at nature centers and national parks in the United States. Working with the National Park Service, the Association of Nature Center Administrators, and the North American Association for Environmental Education, researchers will develop a set of consistent outcome measures for use across diverse programs, they will observe numerous programs to identify characteristics hypothesized to influence these outcomes, and they will determine which characteristics have the greatest influence. The project will result in key practices for developing and delivering programs that enhance positive impacts on youth as well as a set of novel methods for measuring outcomes across diverse types of programs and organizations.