IMPLICATIONS OF SENSE OF PLACE FOR EARTH-SCIENCE INTERPRETATION IN PARKS

Sense of place has been shown to be an authentic and assessable learning outcome of any place-based teaching resource, intervention, or method. The educational approach indigenous to National, regional and local Parks is interpretation, which reveals meanings, ideas, and relationships through thoughtful, visitor-centered translation of landscapes, environments, and objects rather than direct presentation of catalogued facts (Tilden, 1957; Beck & Cable, 1998). Effective interpretation leverages and nurtures a park visitor’s sense of place. Thus, design and implementation of park-specific interpretive programs and resources in Earth science can be enhanced by understanding of the cognitive and affective nature of sense of place, and selective adaptation of effective place-based teaching and assessment approaches from the formal realm. Recent work published in the interpretation literature (e.g., Morgan, 2009; Lillie, Mathis, & Riolo, 2011) makes a more rigorous connection to sense of place. Exemplary geoscience interpretive exhibits, including those along the new Trail of Time Exhibition at Grand Canyon National Park, show ways that sense of place is leveraged in promoting Earth science literacy. Authentic evaluation of interpretive effects on visitors’ senses of place can be informed by park-focused evaluation tools and the qualitative and quantitative assessment methods applied to formal place-based education—some of the latter were actually derived from the former! Both interpretation and place-based education are intended to foster understanding, appreciation, respect, and stewardship in and for Earth’s meaningful places, including its great Parks; and each can benefit from the best practices of the other.