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Changing Public Behavior > Themes > Supporting and motivating professionals

27 Total Findings

Build skills among water outreach professionals to ask the right questions about the:

Drinking water education for managers and government officials should address proper management in 5 risk categories: technical, financial, institutional, political, and social.  These include: appropriate hydrogeological analyses required for local groundwater protection planning; allocation of adequate resources for groundwater protection; the quality of laws, regulations, policies, plans, and organizational structure that governs groundwater protection; leadership that can provide vision, direction, and partnerships with other communities; and the quantity and quality of citizen particiation in groundwater protection initiatives.

Education to protect drinking water quality should focus, at least in part, on water utility managers and local government officials responsible for ensuring reliable and safe drinking water.

Encourage water utilities to adopt a risk management strategy and to identify strategic risks, such as risks to a safe, acceptable, and reliable water supply.  Risks for this category, for example, can include failure to meet requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act; inappropriate catchment management; and failure to plan for growth and changes in demand.  [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

For watershed management decison-making on tribal lands

Identify and provide additional support for group-designated water "experts"

Participating as part of community and watershed groups is more likely to lead to learning new information and making management changes.

Provide policy makers with a link to local information sources.

Provide teacher training that is hands-on, intense, comprehensive, and includes work in the field. A successful training could:

Provide teachers with activities that meet one or more curriculum goals

Provide teachers with an opportunity to experience activities first-hand; interact with other educators; and learn about the materials

Provide teachers with substantial support to better enable them to build water supply and management topics into their curricula by:

Provide teachers with substantial support, to better enable them to build water supply and management topics into their curricula, by:

Provide teachers with substantial support, to better enable them to build water supply and management topics into their curricula, by:

Provide teachers with substantial support, to better enable them to build water supply and management topics into their curricula, by:

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, engage teachers in learning how to develop appropriate assessment materials. For example, model use of preassessment to assess students’ groundwater understandings using various types of multiplechoice items, open-ended questions, and drawing prompts. Ask teachers to analyze what types of information each item provides and construct an appropriate instructional plan based on the responses.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, teach instructors the fundamentals of assessing for conceptual understanding of science concepts. For example, the teacher can identify what language the students are using to describe groundwater and consequently what possible alternative conceptions may need to be explicitly addressed.

To help landowners learn new information, about riparian areas, landowners prefer that staff characteristics include knowledge about riparian management and understanding of the practicalities of living and working near riparian areas.

To increase understanding of complex concepts related to groundwater:

Train water education professionals to apply these steps when designing an outreach program:

When developing watershed education materials:

When developing watershed education teacher manuals, identify barriers to implementation and adapt materials to respond to identified needs.

When facilitating sustainable watershed and environmental management at large institutions emphasize:

When water utilities are developing a risk management strategy, encourage them to communicate with stakeholder groups, such as employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, investors, regulators, communiites, and the public.  [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

When working on riparian issues, allow the local community to drive the process, identify the timelines, and identify the way in which they wish to manage riparian areas. Use awareness, team and tool building, community-based action, and monitoring.

When working on riparian issues, employ multiple interactions and a mix of many extension methods to offer opportunities for diverse information and ideas and methods of providing them, and to meet individualized learning needs. Methods may include presentations, field days, workshops, individual landowner visits, riparian health inventories and reports, written materials, technical advice, and web site information on riparian areas and grazing management.

When working on riparian issues, give the community the opportunity to build a relationship with extension staff, to build trust and understanding, and to allow enough time for multiple interactions to occur.


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