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Results from a series of surveys describe dimensions of middle and high school science teachers' preparation for and practices around climate science instruction in the classroom. Descriptions are drawn from 877 respondents to four surveys of US middle and high school science teachers from 2009-2011. Most respondents had engaged in self-directed learning or short duration workshops to prepare for climate instruction while a third had received professional development in sustained undergraduate or graduate level courses. Controversy was cited as the top climate education concern in 2011, followed by the need for resources, alignment with standards and needs for professional development. Some respondents perceive the existence or human-attribution of recent climate change to be false, some accept and wish to teach the evidence that the climate is changing due primarily to human activities, and some describe a desire to teach ''both sides'' without describing the motivation. The most commonly used strategy to address controversy and misinformation is to promote learning about the nature of science, evidence, and data. Recommendations for supporting teachers in climate science instruction are made based upon the findings of these studies, the evolution literature, and the Next Generation Science Standards.

Educators seek to develop 21st century skills in the classroom by incorporating educational materials other than textbooks into their lessons, such as digitally available activities, videos, and visualizations. A problem that educators face is that no review process similar to the formal adoption processes used for K-12 textbooks or the college-textbook review process exists for these types of online educational resources. However, educators need authoritative high-quality digital teaching materials. The scientific journal peer-review system offers a well-established model to adapt to the requirements of a peer review of educational materials. In this paper, we review ten review processes developed to evaluate digital geoscience educational resources and focus in detail on a rigorous iterative peer-review process recently developed by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) project. This process builds upon existing efforts and emphasizes the "curation" of a digital collection that addresses the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy and the Energy Literacy Principles. Providing educators with thoroughly reviewed educational materials is especially important for fast changing, societally important, and sensitive areas such as climate and energy science.