Forestry Education Support by a Forest Research Institute: Development of Forestry Educational Programs for Vocational High Schools

Forestry education in vocational high schools is one of the fundamental keys for achieving sustainable forest management. However, support systems for forestry education have not been well developed in Japan. Forest research institutes, which have accumulated relevant information, should have sufficient ability to develop new educational programs in this field. This study examined the possibility of support systems for forestry technical education by a research institute. Educational programs for vocational high schools were developed, and the programs were examined for their practical applications through a workshop for these teachers. We set the following five requirements for the programs: They should 1) incorporate new contents related to sustainable forest management, 2) be based on forestry education textbooks, 3) meet recent demands of the schools and society, 4) allow participants to learn through actual practice and experience, and 5) utilize readily available teaching materials. With these criteria, we developed the following two educational programs: (a) Forest management program to teach advanced techniques, (b) A timber-program to teach about biomass resources. The workshop was held on July $28^{th}$, 2007 with ten teachers attending. The programs were very interesting, who gave them high average evaluation of 4.6 on a scale of 1 to 5. Only a few issues need to be resolved before classroom instruction can begin, such as making wood structure easier to understanding for some teachers, and obtaining base maps of school forests. In conclusion, forest research institutes can effectively support forestry education by providing and implementing programs based on scientific information.