Teacher Characteristics and Perceptions of Pest Management Curricula: Clues to Adoption and Continuation

Educate to Eradicate is a K-12 curriculum project using termite biology and control as the basis for science education that has been implemented in over 350 Hawaii public school classrooms. To encourage sustained implementation of the project, we aimed to identify factors that influence the adoption and continuation of pest management curricula in public school classrooms. Regression analysis of teacher survey data were used to create predictive models of teacher continuation. Teachers motivated by “exciting students about science”, who perceived increases in “student understanding and comprehension of major termite knowledge concepts” and/or students as “more interested in termites after participating in this project” were more likely to continue curriculum. Teachers who had worked at their current school over 21 years at the time of curriculum adoption, and/or who identified having subject specialties not listed on the survey were less likely to continue curriculum. Additionally, teachers servicing lower socioeconomic level students were less likely to continue the curricula.