Nontimber Forest Product Curriculum Workbook Available
The Nontimber Forest Product Curriculum Workbook, written by Dr. Kathryn Lynch, is available through the Institute for Culture and Ecology website. This project was funded by the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry.
The workbook (http://www.ifcae.org/projects/ncssf2/index.html) is an interdisciplinary set of instructional materials including over 100 lesson plans and handouts covering the ecological, cultural, political, and economic importance of NTFPs. The geographic focus of the workbook is the United States, but the exercises can be adapted to scale-up to the international arena, or to scale-down to focus on species and issues of regional or local importance.
The workbook consists of seven modules each including detailed lessons plans, activities, evaluation tools, and ready-to-use teaching aids, such as PowerPoint presentations and handouts. Each module has a specific disciplinary orientation (history, culture, economics, ecology, policy) to facilitate easy adoption within those different disciplines. The curriculum encourages critical thinking about NTFP issues and their relationship to overall forest health, sustainability and biodiversity conservation. This is accomplished through interactive classroom and field activities. Both theoretical frameworks and research methods are introduced and there is an emphasis on building effective communication and collaboration skills. Faculty are encouraged to integrate individual lesson plans into their existing courses or use the workbook materials as the foundation for a new course or workshop on NTFPs. In addition, the Institute for Culture and Ecology is available to facilitate a set of workshops and courses based on the materials.
The Institute for Culture and Ecology website address is http://www.ifcae.org/.
