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Educating for Climate Action and Justice: Guidelines for Excellence comprises a set of recommendations designed to assist educators in developing and implementing effective programs that focus on climate change, address injustice, and ignite action. With this set of guidelines, we offer suggestions for creating more inclusive and equitable learning environments that support learners as they make informed decisions and take collective actions to address our changing global climate.

Through the National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education, the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) is taking the lead in establishing guidelines for the development of coherent and comprehensive environmental education materials and programs. These guidelines draw on our best thinking honed by scholars and practitioners across a variety of fields and settings, including formal and nonformal education, environmental justice and climate justice, curriculum development, instructional design, early childhood education, and adult education.

To ensure that these Guidelines for Excellence reflect a widely shared understanding of climate education and climate justice, background research was conducted, and thought leaders in climate education, environmental justice, and climate justice were interviewed. A team of climate education and climate justice professionals from various backgrounds and organizational affiliations wrote the guidelines. This team took on the challenge of turning ideas about quality into tangible recommendations and examples. Multiple drafts of these guidelines were circulated widely to practitioners and scholars from across North America and around the world. We incorporated their comments into successive revisions of the document. Over 800 scholars and practitioners participated in the writing of these guidelines. This document reflects our collective wisdom.

To learn more and to access additional resources, visit the Guidelines for Excellence website.