Teaching conservation management means more than just learning about solving complex and difficult environmental issues. Such learning must also consider the likely administrative context that students will end up working in. This article outlines the development of a role-play that uses online technology to teach several administrative processes…

The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates "spaces of attention" wherein visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative…

Women represent growing numbers of faculty members in higher education as well as in recreation/leisure departments. The purpose of this study is to describe the career development of women faculty in recreation-related areas and to offer implications for faculty development and the preparation of future faculty. Data were collected from women who…

Geography content in teaching materials is often overlooked, mislabeled as another subject, or generalized as social studies while ignoring the physical aspect of the subject. American educators generally do not recognize the breadth of geography because it is a subject in which they are often not familiar. This study used an interpretive content…

Research on noise shows that a variety of effects including stress, annoyance, and performance decrements exist for certain types of sounds. Noise interferes with cognitive ability by overloading the attentional system or simply distracting from efficient encoding or rehearsal, but very little research has extended those findings to recreation or…

Originally conceived by National Park Service (NPS) officials as a way to "revive and maintain the interest of Indians in their own games and industries," the Yosemite Indian Field Days were part rodeo, part pageant, and part craft fair. Through its activities, the Field Days offered white tourists the opportunity to encounter…

To investigate if the units of the São Carlos Ecological Pole (São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil) are educating spaces that may contribute to the understanding of the complexity of environmental issues and stimulate a sense of belonging and social responsibility, we interviewed primary school teachers who had accompanied visits to these places and…

This article presents an interview with Cynthia Light Brown, author of "Discover National Monuments, National Parks: Natural Wonders," a book that introduces readers ages 8-12 to the history and science behind some of the amazing natural sites in the United States. In this interview, Cynthia Light Brown describes how she became interested in…

A set of computer-based recreation choice experiments were run to examine the effect of expected congestion and social interactions on the decision making process. MouseTrace is a process-tracing program that recorded individual subject's information acquisitions and provided the necessary information to determine if subjects used attribute-based…

In the last two decades, playgrounds have gotten safer, more streamlined--and progressively worse. Today's playgrounds are distinctly less fun, and distinctly worse for kids. But there's a new vision for tomorrow's playgrounds--letting children design their ideal playgrounds, which parents and community leaders look through when selecting the…

Many artists visit national parks to draw, paint and take photographs of some of the most amazing scenery on earth. Raw nature is one of the greatest inspirations to an artist, and artists can be credited for helping inspire the government to create the National Park System. This article features Thomas Moran (1837-1926), one of the artists who…

Since 2004, middle and high school students have been monitoring the effects of ground-level ozone by collecting data on observable leaf injury on cutleaf coneflower ("Rudbeckia laciniata") and crownbeard ("Verbesina occidentalis") in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This project is part of an ongoing citizen-science effort in which…

Since earning her Ph.D. in 1997, the author had become interested in "public history"--history that is engaged with public audiences or with current public and policy issues. Her dissertation topic fits that niche nicely since the Blue Ridge Parkway has long been the most-visited site in the U.S. National Park system. In turning her research into…

This study assessed the nature of the relationship between earning advanced degrees and career outcomes such as salary, job satisfaction, social capital, and human capital among professionals in the parks and recreation field. The sample (n = 196) was drawn from parks and recreation agencies located in the United States. Agencies, excluding…

During the last few years the Italian school system has seen significant changes but geography continues to be considered a boring and un-useful discipline by public institutions. The main problem is the widespread geographic illiteracy and the fact that very often people do not know the objectives, methodology and tools of geographical studies.…