Alan R. Berkowitz
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Starting in the early 1990's, I had the opportunity to coordinate the work of the Ecological Society of America Education Committee to review the National Research Council's National Science Standards and AAAS's Project 2061 Benchmarks. In both instances, much of our emphasis was on assuring the accuracy and currency of the concepts being included. We argued for the importance of being able to apply ecology concepts in the real world and on developing in students the inquiry skills and ecology knowledge needed to investigate the local environment. More recently, our group within ESA provided extensive input to the North American Association for Environmental Education as they developed guidelines and standards for environmental education. We worked working hard to modernize the ecology included in these versus earlier environmental education standards, I also championed the importance of science process and inquiry skills as essential parts of environmental literacy.

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