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Program History
How did Resource Reviews evolve from the Guidelines for Excellence?
The National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education, initiated by NAAEE in 1993, developed a series of Guidelines that set the standards for environmental education. The first of these was the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence, a set of recommendations for developing and selecting environmental education materials.
After the Guidelines were published, NAAEE reviewed several hundred selected curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials using these new standards. The reviews were published in a series of educators' resource guides: Environmental Education Collection - A Review of Resources for Educators:
However, NAAEE hasn't the staff or budget to evaluate the millions of environmental education materials that are published, or even the thousands of materials created by NAAEE members. Therefore, the logical next step was to create a fee-based system that would allow resource creators to participate in an independent review process.
Thus NAAEE member volunteers created Resource Reviews, a process that culminates with a symbol to appear in the National EE Directory to indicate those materials that have been reviewed against the Guidelines. NAAEE's program is based on a program initiated by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, which built its program from the online database system that NAAEE created for our Affiliate associations and other organizations. Click here for information on the development of the Resource Reviews program.