미국 국립공원내 환경교육 시스템의 실제 - 워싱턴주 국립공원 지역의 해설 프로그램 사례를 중심으로

Abstract

There is lack of social awareness on the importance of natural environments and effective operating systems for environmental education in natural settings. In this study, the environmental education systems of three U. S. National Parks in the State of Washington were investigated in order to examine the potential of applying the environmental education systems to the Korean situation. To this end, the authors made field trips to the Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park and North Cascades National Park and interviewed the field environmental education professionals. There is one common theme of environmental education shared by the three National Parks, that is the National Parks are open to the students and ordinary people as classrooms for environmental education. All of the three National Parks were supported by regional societies of environmental conservation and education. However, the contents of and approaches to the environmental education of each National Park were different to each other reflecting the differences of the natural environment and cultural background. This implies that environmental education systems should be designed based on the characteristics of the local environment and cultural tradition, although advanced environmental education systems of foreign countries would be useful for developing our own environmental education systems.