A Library of EE Research at Your Fingertips!

By Judy Braus (Executive Director of NAAEE) and Sarah Milligan-Toffler (Executive Director of C&NN)

We are so excited to announce the launch of a new research library: eeRESEARCH (naaee.org/eeresearch). This database is a partnership between the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) and the Children & Nature Network (C&NN), with support from the Pisces Foundation. With more than 1,000 peer-reviewed articles, summaries, and syntheses, eeRESEARCH represents one of the largest single collections of peer-reviewed literature focused on environmental education and connecting people to nature in the world (at least we think it’s one of the largest!).    

We know that new and exciting research articles are published daily about environmental education and connecting people to nature. Unfortunately, the majority of that research is behind firewalls that are not accessible to practitioners, funders, parents, and others seeking to understand what the research says about what works and how to improve practice in the field.

Through this new collaborative effort, eeRESEARCH provides free access to the combined research collections of both C&NN and NAAEE in one, user-friendly online portal. We have included a summary of the articles, as well links to a number of syntheses that look across the research to help highlight key understandings. And we will provide access to the full articles when they have open access rights. After more than a year of planning and designing the database, we are so pleased to contribute to improving the availability of research for everyone working to improve their practice, strengthen equitable access to nature and high quality environmental education opportunities, and build a more sustainable future for all.

Advancing a research agenda for this field and translating the evidence in meaningful ways are daunting tasks for any one organization or group to accomplish alone. Through our combined efforts, we feel that we have forged a new path for how organizations can work together to not only advance our organizational goals, but also to truly advance the field. By joining forces, we are leveraging the strengths of both organizations, aligning on the process for research collection, and sharing information broadly between our networks—efforts that we believe will help improve practice based on available research. And we hope to add new partners in the future!

Please take time to explore the site, let us know what you think, and keep helping us make this library as useful as possible. Thanks again to the Pisces Foundation for helping to make this a reality, to our friends at Duke University for helping with the research summaries and overall planning, and to all our colleagues who helped us think through what this might look like, how it could work, and what type of search function would help all of us find what we’re looking for. And a huge thanks to Bill Finnegan at Tamarack Media for building the site and working with all our partners to make it come alive! 

Happy searching!

check out the research library

download eeRESEARCH Flyer

Help us make this library as useful as possible!

We encourage you to explore eeRESEARCH and let us know what you think. You’ll see a button on every page that will let you report a problem or provide feedback. We’d love to hear from you!