UC Santa Barbara

This dissertation explored the roles schools can play in the successful outcomes of large carnivore or keystone reintroduction projects. Schools are more than centers for knowledge acquisition—they connect their community and disseminate information quickly to a wide audience. This study took place in California's Eastern Sierra Nevada, a landscape where the California subspecies of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus) was decimated a century ago, and where some interested parties would like to see brown bears reintroduced. A 7-lesson science unit was designed to be implemented in schools where grizzly reintroduction could take place. 101 students participated in the study: sixty 6th graders; thirty-two 8th graders; five 9th graders; three 10th graders and one senior in high school. The design of the unit took advantage of a Swedish carnivore management model instead of a more commonplace environmental education framework typically used in conservation education. The Next Generation Science Standards’ (NGSS) innovative focus on increasing critical thinking, interdisciplinarity, as well as the Environmental Principles and Concepts’ emphasis on real world environmental problem solving offered the cooperative setting for this type of pedagogy. It was theorized that the unit could assist community outreach of local conservation projects that involve controversial matters benefitting not only students but conservation goals.

This dissertation used pre and post interviews as well as surveys to examine how the Swedish carnivore management framework played out in an educational context; how teachers’ (n=3) thinking about grizzly bear reintroduction changed after teaching the unit; and how students’ (n=101) attitudes and knowledge changed after the educational program took place. Finally, qualitative data was collected to explore teachers’ (n=6) ideas of how conservationists can work with schools to enhance the success of brown bear reintroduction in California. Findings indicated teacher thinking became more complex, rigorous, and nuanced towards grizzly reintroduction.

These findings offer conservationists and educators unique insight into how knowledge interacts with attitudes in teachers and students for a large carnivore reintroduction context. This study takes the primary steps to create a pedagogical groundwork and concrete tools that could benefit schools while also improving management strategies surrounding the potential reintroduction of grizzly bears to the state of California, as well as other reintroduction projects that involve large carnivore or keystone species.