How experiential service-learning affects student perceptions of education in their careers and as a wildlife management activity.

ABSTRACT Wildlife education has long been critiqued for leaving students entering the workforce deficient in skills such as communication, public relations, and problem solving. This challenge may emerge from both curricula and instructional techniques focused on technical expertise rather than soft skills. Researchers have suggested several instructional techniques to address this challenge but have not empirically examined their effectiveness. This study examined how an environmental-education service-learning project affected undergraduate wildlife science students' perceptions of education as a possible career and how important they considered education as a wildlife management activity using a pre-posttreatment comparison between 36 wildlife students at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC, USA, during spring 2014) participating in an environmental-education service-learning project and 23 wildlife students from the same cohort who were not. In the pretest, few (10.3%) students from either group saw K-12 education as a future career, but most (98.3%) saw education as an important wildlife management activity. Most (82.0%) students also predicted they would need educator skills in their careers, but more females than males saw this as likely. The treatment was positively related to students' belief they would use teaching skills in future careers and that a career in K-12 education would be fulfilling. These results suggest that service-learning projects may be an effective tool to boost interest in education both as a career and as a wildlife management activity among future wildlife professionals regardless of gender, but that especially high interest among females could provide guidance for training and recruitment efforts attempting to mitigate the gender gap among wildlife professionals. © 2015 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]