FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Each year groups of visitors to national parks cluster around rangers or volunteers to learn more about a site’s natural life and history. A recreation researcher at the University of Arkansas has found that park staff and volunteers remain true to their roots as nature guides, even as the field of heritage interpretation matures into a certified discipline with formal training.

Gregory M. Benton presented research at the recent national conference of the National Association for Interpretation showing that practitioners focus mainly on one of the four goals emphasized in formal training.

“In spite of the multiple management goals developed in academia to direct training and certification,” Benton said, “the practice of interpretation remains focused on its original goal of connecting visitors to nature and culture.”

Benton studied the cultural programs at three National Park Service sites “focused on native peoples” — Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, Fort Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas and Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia. He recorded interpretive programs and interviews with staff at the sites and conducted telephone interviews with visitors a month after they visited the site.

Lee Warren at Bandelier National Monument with a rebuilt house in the background.

Benton identified four broad goals that have emerged as the field of interpretation develops, and he compared what he learned about actual practice of interpreters in the parks with these goals. While the formal goals include encouraging environmental literacy or understanding, influencing visitor behavior and promoting tourism, Benton found that staff emphasized the first goal — “connecting visitors to the history and culture of native peoples.”

For example, interpretive staff at Bandelier National Monument help visitors understand that the site is not an abandoned ruin. Rather, the site is a revered place for the Pueblo Indians who live in the area. In an article Benton wrote for the magazine of the National Association for Interpretation, he quotes one of the Bandelier interpreters explaining why she dislikes the term “ruins” with its connotation of abandonment:

“To us, these places are cared for very much. . The birds still sing here and this place is alive. It is not a place of ruins. And so to me, we call them homes, dwelling areas, archeological sites, anything.”

Noting that the site is still used for ceremonies, another staff member said, “They have never forgotten or lost their connection in any way. All they did was move. They didn’t sever their connections. The place is still very special to them.”

Len Scheel of Bandelier National Monument hollows out a bit of the large stone each day to show how Pueblos used hard rocks from the river to chip at the softer rock and enlarge cave openings.

In follow-up interviews with visitors to the site, Benton found that they retained the understanding that Bandelier is a living place to the Pueblos. As one visitor concluded, “It is nice they are sharing with the people, knowing it is a national monument.”

“I’m impressed by the integrity and open minds of the interpreters I met,” Benton said. “They do an incredible job of letting people form their own connections with the history of their parks.”

Benton found that the second identified goal — encouraging environmental literacy — was initially narrowly viewed and dominated by ecology and physical sciences. Given the social histories of the sites, the notion of environmental literacy was expanded to integrate cultural and natural resources. At the sites he studied, interpreters made their own decisions about whether to include environmental literacy messages in their programs.When Benton examined the data from the three parks, he found little related to the goal of influencing visitor behavior. In general, rules were in place to direct visitors, and barriers and signs protected resources, such as structures and plant life.

Benton was surprised to find how little attention interpreters paid to the potential economic benefits of tourism. Although many of the interpreters also spent time working in the gift shop, they generally waited for visitors to request information before directing them to books and other items for sale.

Benton, an assistant professor of recreation in the UA College of Education and Health Professions, has served as a certifier of interpretive products and programs with both the National Park Service Interpretive Development Program and the National Association for Interpretation. His study, he concluded, suggests the need for further research into the certification programs of the two organizations and into how other public and private leisure providers apply multiple goals in interpretation.