Developing Innovative Strategies for Aviation Education and Participation

Resources to help promote interest in aviation among younger populations ranging from 10 years old to 25 years old are detailed in TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 202.

The report is designed to help educators and aviation enthusiasts understand the need for encouraging interest in aviation. It offers guidance on developing a program of activities to fit particular needs and provides activities for developing a program that can be scaled and tailored for various age groups and resource availability.

The report is designed to help develop intentional pathways for promoting interest in aviation. These pathways are seen as the process for engaging students at an early age to pursue aviation at some level and then have them, in turn, continue the cycle by promoting aviation to others.

The report addresses the challenges to establishing and maintaining these pathways—such as resource limitations, lack of programming or curriculum, competing interests for kids, and administrative or organizational issues—and identifies opportunities to overcome them.

The report also provides support for developing and executing single events and activities when they are the most practical means for exposing young people to the aviation industry. Finally, the report includes three summary listings of the landing pages. The landing pages are a collection of activities that can engage young people in aviation and be adapted to any particular group or organization. They are sorted by activity type, target age group, and cost per person. A searchable list, by keyword, of these landing pages can be found in the Presorted Tables PDF.

There is also an individual activity landing pages PDF, which is an alphabetical listing of organizations and the types of activities they offer. The PDF User Guide explains how to use and search the PDFs. A microsite with the Presorted Tables PDF, the Individual Activity Landing Pages PDF, and the PDF User Guide may be found at http://www.trb.org/acrp/acrpreport202.aspx.