Forestry education that goes beyond the standard and unoriginal

When foresters ask me, as a university academic, about forestry education, they appear to be thinking predominately about bachelor, master’s and PhD programs that include ‘forestry’ or ‘forest science’ in their titles. In the course of these conversations, many foresters lament the demise of the four-year professional and ‘named’ forestry bachelor degrees in Australia, now that the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Melbourne have disestablished their programs (although the Bachelor of Forest Science and Management continues at Southern Cross University (SCU)). With the exception of the SCU’s Bachelor and Master of Forest Science and Management, and ANU’s Master of Forestry, no bachelor or master’s programs in Australia now include the words ‘forestry’ or ‘forest science’. Tertiarylevel students can and still do enrol in bachelor and master’s programs with titles that include ‘environment’, ‘ecosystem’, ‘sustainability’ or ‘conservation’, in which they can craft programs comprising courses that focus on ‘forestry’. The ANU, for example, offers three master’s programs in its Fenner School of Environment and Society—‘Environment’; ‘Environmental Science’; and ‘Forestry’—and candidates in each of these can focus on forestry and include courses that cover essentials like silviculture, mensuration, forest policy and management. Nevertheless, there remains a perception that a forest focus is optional and all too easily diluted unless the program is specifically named. In the ANU master’s programs, only graduates in the Master of Forestry typically self-identify as foresters, and only those graduates are required to take forestry-oriented courses that are optional for the others. ‘Education’ is increasingly defined in wide-ranging terms: for example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 2016, fig. 0.1, reproduced in Fig. 1) identifies ‘formal’, ‘non-formal’ and ‘informal’ forms of education, at multiple levels. A focus on named bachelor and master’s programs as ‘the’ level at which forestry education occurs misses many types and levels where the whole concept of forestry can be learned and practised. For example, there are formal apprenticeships, certificates and diplomas (at International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 3–4 or, at the graduate level, ISCED 6–7) in which participants focus on technical or other bounded aspects of forestry needed to keep the industry and profession viable. In 2019, the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of Tasmania both proposed a number of new graduate certificates and diplomas to focus on wood science, engineering, harvesting and wood use. These levels of education could lead to graduates who support improved productivity, stronger economic growth and better service delivery in forest management and wood use (World Bank 2018). A recent ANU Master of Environment graduate, Dollie Yao (whose thesis abstract appears in this issue), examined the potential for forestry education at ISCED level 3 (upper secondary) (Yao 2019). She concluded that, although there are numerous opportunities within the Australian core curriculum to incorporate forestry and, as a next step, to promote proforests behaviour that emphasises wise forest management and use, forests are rarely incorporated or are only represented indirectly in course curricula. Where forests are included, Yao found that they are typically portrayed in narrow or negative contexts (e.g. deforestation). She suggests that individual teachers, passionate and appropriately resourced, would be key to realising the pro-environment and pro-forests potential of Australian upper secondary education. In support of this, the ForestLearning initiative (http://forestlearning.edu.au/) is providing free pro-environment and pro-forestry material to support authorised school curricula. Formal education also extends to Early Childhood (ISCED 0), and there appears to be a resurgence of efforts to ensure that early childhood is partly experienced ‘outdoors’. ‘Forest kindergartens’, ‘bush kinders’ and ‘nature schools’ are appearing in Australia, where 3–6-year-olds spend substantial, if not all their, learning time outside school buildings and in ‘nature’. Of course, trees feature in all these schools, from which students can move through the formal education system with the foundational knowledge that they are part of the environment and can learn and work in the forests. As Figure 1 indicates, formal learning is only part of the education environment. Non-formal education is increasingly available via digital platforms, ranging from podcast series through to ‘massively open online courses’ (MOOCs), which may provide certificates of completion. Many of the MOOCs involve university input but do not necessarily meet ISCED standards. A number of available MOOCs mention ‘forest’, although the range is eclectic—from poetry and photography to ecology, sustainability and human history. Informal education can be even more varied and variable, ranging from media and outlets that have high editorial standards and production quality (e.g. BBC documentaries, digital platforms like The Conversation and high-quality print outlets) through to enthusiast and ‘conspiracy-theory’ opportunities like some YouTube and podcast series with agenda-based products. Non-formal and informal education cannot easily be monitored, and even truth-checking is limited, but unfortunately it now forms the majority of the ‘education’ that people receive on forestry and the environment. For example, it is much easier to make a dramatic and powerful newspaper headline or YouTube video on deforestation (and, by association, forestry) than to follow the cycles and nuances of