The mission of the Environmental Literacy Council is to help students to become environmentally literate—which is to say equipped with certain scientific and mathematical knowledge, with the ability to gather and evaluate information, to estimate risk and uncertainty, and to understand environmental issues in economic, ethical and historical contexts.

If teachers are to be expected to foster such learning among their students, they must be given help, both to enable them to improve their own level of environmental literacy, and to provide them with ideas and information they can use in their teaching. With funding from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Environmental Literacy Council is developing a full set of online resources for environmental studies. Designed with the assistance of scientific advisors and experienced teachers, the resources will include labs, activities and research materials. This project will provide accessible resources and ongoing professional development to help educators develop a firm grounding in the science content they need to cover these topics, and to enable them to integrate understandings important to environmental literacy into their teaching.

For more information visit: www.enviroliteracy.org

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