Global environmental education: publications to facilitate the transfer of global science technology and information to middle school teachers

For the past 25 years the NOAA's National Sea Grant College Program-working in partnership with over 300 institutions of higher learning within this country and its territories-has provided the support for a broad range of educational programs and technology transfers. Further, this partnership has resulted in a strong link to scientific research concerning marine and aquatic concepts and societal awareness by specifically addressing the learning needs of teachers and students. There is no longer the perception that the marine environment begins at the shore. Rather, there is an understanding that what happens on land is critical to coastal marine environments. In 1996, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium concluded that with the influx of people to coastal areas, and "since the natural processes and living organisms in the coastal waters ignore political boundaries (Jones and Hecker, 1990)", the breadth of Sea Grant's interests should assume regional, national, and global dimensions. The Global Environmental Education (GEE) study for middle school teachers, cooperatively sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the University of Southern Mississippi, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC), and the Sea Grant Programs of Florida, Louisiana, Maine-New Hampshire, Oregon, and Georgia has made a significant and important contribution to science education efforts across the southeastern United States. In addition to statistically significant gains in content knowledge by the 143 middle school teachers who participated in 1992, 1993, and 1994, "follow-up" staff development programs conducted by these teachers have greatly expanded the impact of this effort. These programs, conducted in local school districts within the four Gulf of Mexico states represented, have introduced an additional 2,860 middle school teachers and curriculum specialists to recent research and classroom "hands-on", inquiry-based activities concerning global change issues.