Environmental Education Materials Guidelines For Excellence

Environmental Education Materials Guidelines For Excellence

Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence Workbook

These guidelines are a set of recommendations for developing and selecting environmental education materials with the aim of helping developers of activity guides, lesson plans, and other instructional materials produce high quality products and providing educators with a tool to evaluate the wide array of available education materials. They offer a way to judge the relative merit of different materials, a standard to aim for in developing new materials, and a set of ideas about what a well-rounded environmental education curriculum might be like. The guidelines point out six key characteristics of high quality environmental education materials, including fairness and accuracy, depth, emphasis on skill building, action orientation, instructional soundness, and usability. For each of these characteristics there are listed some guidelines for environmental education materials to follow. Each guideline is accompanied by several indicators listed under the heading "What to Look For". These indicators suggest ways of gauging whether the materials being evaluated or developed follow the guidelines. (JRH)

This resource guide is designed to help educators find curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials that can enhance the teaching of environmental education in a variety of settings. Curriculum guides and other educational materials listed in this guide were evaluated by classroom teachers, content experts, and environmental educators. Each set of materials was reviewed by at least three people. Curriculum materials included in this compendium were evaluated using the Environmental Education Materials Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association For Environmental Education (NAAEE). The write-ups were designed to point out the variety of factors an educator may wish to consider when deciding which materials are most appropriate for a particular group of students and how those materials might be used most effectively. The first section of this guide highlights approximately 50 environmental education curriculum materials. Each entry contains a summary of the curriculum information about grade levels, subject areas, author, publishers, and price; comments specific to the six key characteristics of quality environmental education materials according to the Guidelines for Excellence; and a sample of quotations from the reviewers' evaluation sheets. The second section contains an annotated listing of support materials. Appendices include a curriculum matrix, publisher index, and an author/editor index (PVD).

Nonformal Environmental Education Programs Guidelines For Excellence