Forestry faculties in Poland educate staff for both the State Forests (SF) and national parks, as well as for numerous institutions and organizations related to natural environment. When these institutions, each in their own way, undertake non-formal education activities and thus they also implement international goals of sustainable development policy.
For over 20 years forest education has been included in the statutory activity of the SF.
However, forestry graduates were not getting necessary pedagogical education during their stud-ies. That was a starting point for foresters when education became part of their dutstud-ies. They were completing pedagogical courses on their own and they were independently improving their skills.
Although there were workshops for education leaders as well as trainings for educators organized by the State Forests, they were insuffi cient in relation to needs. At the same time, the matter “for-est and ecological education” was introduced to the study program at for“for-estry faculties. At this time, the approach to environmental education has started to change dynamically in the world.
It was recognized that the best results are obtained through active actions and that’s why regular lectures have been enriched with exercises and practical fi eld activities. Recent pedagogical re-search results have been introduced and implemented in kindergartens and schools. The impor-tant step was establishment of the post-graduate studies in “Forest and Nature Education” at the Faculty of Forestry of the University of Agriculture in Krakow in 2014. The studies offer courses for forest educators from all over Poland. The program of these studies refl ects the current needs in education of educators. It is based on three pillars: transferring current, modern knowledge, creating skills and social competences, sought by employers, and investing in education of the highest quality. The advantages of the studies include not only an innovative program, diversity of workshop classes and participation of lecturers with diverse, extensive practical experience, but also the opportunity to exchange experiences of educators from different backgrounds. The studies were twice awarded the “Studies with the Future” quality mark (2016, 2017) and they were awarded the “Innovation Laurel” Special Certifi cate.
Modern environmental education is the key to creating attitudes and building responsible society. Its special feature is to activate senses and imagination through experiencing the world of nature. Therefore, in the fi eld of forest education, emphasis should be placed differently and the
perspective should be wider. The priority should be given to achieving goals of education for sus-tainable development and protection of biodiversity over promoting tasks of the enterprise and its economic goals. A look from this side provides much more effective access to appropriate groups of recipients and allows to present the State Forests activities as an element of a holistic view at the needs of humanity anchored in natural environment. Education of educators needs a systemic ap-proach because, as it has been shown, forest knowledge together with basic pedagogical knowledge is not enough. Educational challenges require that educators are specifi cally prepared and specially committed as well as they are given a possibility to use modern tools from many fi elds. That all contribute to making a forester-educator an interesting and reliable guide in forest, because people are mostly fascinated and shaped not by facts and fi gures, but by stories and other people.
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