COURSE REFLECTION AS AN IMPROVEMENT TOOL WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO EQUALITY IN FORESTRY EDUCATION

Since the start in 2001, approximately 3,000 students have attended courses in Sustainable Small-scale Forestry at the Linnaeus University in Sweden. The majority of the students are private forest owners. The courses in Sustainable Small-scale Forestry have been successful in recruiting and educating both men and women, unlike many other Swedish forestry educations. The number of students correspond to the relation between female (38 %) and male (62 %) forest owners.

Sociocultural perspectives on learning promotes the importance of social contexts and the idea of sharing thoughts and experiences with other people in order to motivate and confirm knowledge. Therefore cooperation and student focused learning with peer reviews and reflection are often given elements when planning a course. But how do educators work with their own internal course development? What kind of reflection and peer review can be helpful in improving your own course?

At the Linnaeus University, a systematic course reflection was introduced to the teachers in the Forestry Department in 2009. The purpose was to help the teaching staff perceive shortcomings and possibilities of amelioration, as well as to systemize and make improvement efforts to courses more efficient. The process was a spin-off from the participation in the National Strategy for Equality within the Forestry Sector that was initiated by the Swedish government in 2009. The Strategy focused on three actions where Education was one of them. Linnaeus University played an active part in the progress to create and realize the National Strategy for Equality that was introduced and taken action on in April 2010.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prospect of course reflection to improve university courses and to pay attention to a specific issue. The benefit of course reflection in the improvement work was assessed by having all members of the teaching staff reflect on their own use of course reflection (meta-reflection).

The study included fourteen people from the teaching staff, two from each of seven different courses in Sustainable Small-scale Forestry. The courses are internet-based distance courses with a blended learning approach. The teachers took notes during and after the course and put the thoughts down in a standardized form. In addition to the general course related issues, they were asked to focus on how equality (between women and men, ethnical background, age etc.) has been promoted in the course. The evaluation of the study is in progress. Preliminary results will be presented in summer 2012.