| Abstract: |
| This reports presents the result of a regional study on agroforestry education and training in five Southeast Asian countries : Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The project was coordinated by ICRAF, in collaboration with the Institute of Agroforestry, University of the Philippines Los Banos, and supported by the Swedish International Dvelopment Coorperation Agency (Sida). Data was collected through questionaries and institutional visits and analysed in five national meetings and two regional workshop, all during 1998. Five country reports were written by ICRAF appointed education fellows in April-July 1998. An overview of regional organizations linked to agroforestry education was done by ICRAF.
The underlying hypothesis was that there is great demand for high quality agroforestry education, and that a regional mechanism would be helpful in advancing tertiary agroforestry education in Southeast Asia.
At the regional level, the study showed that there are many common areas of needs and experience among educational institutions in Southeast Asia, but very limited mechanism for collaboration, nationally as well as regionally. Agroforestry education is hampered by inadequate or outdated curricula, lack of minimum standards, and obstacles to agroforestry curriculum updating to benefit from developments in agroforestry research.
There is a general shortage of relevant and high quality training materials, including textbooks, manual, and case studies. Existing teaching materials require updating and translation. Often, universities and colleges have inadequate human and material resources to develop research capacity in agroforestry, particularly level. There has not been a systematic survey of education and training needs in agroforestry.
Agroforestry is yet to be recognized as a field of specialization in many school, and there are no specific government jobs in agroforestry.
Other issues apply at both national and regional level, notably that :
1. Agroforestry education is not adequately linked to the field, or properly linked to research and extention
2. Available country and regional resources are not adequatelt tapped.
Certain issues refer to the natiional or institutional level :
1. Inadequate or uncoordinate institutional and policy arrrangements
2. Unclear or varied perceptions of agrofirestry
3. Inadequate numbers of agroforestry lecturers, limited teaching materials for distance learning, and
4. General lack of, or access to, field practical facilities in agroforestry.
At the same time as these needs are clearly expressed, there is a considerable, and growing, interest in agroforestry development in the five countries in this study. Educational institutions are responding to this growing interest in several ways : Thy increasing include agroforestry in their educational programmes, as a topic, as acourse or as a full programme. Many ionstitutions have plans to further increase or develop their agroforestri education. Several institutions offer graduate research opportunities in agroforestry. Short term training courses are also offered for a wide clientele in many institutions. At the national level institutions join forces in agroforestry education : the Phillippines agroforestry education in 1998. Vi
etnam has a network on social forestry education that also addresses agroforestry aspects. In other countries there is informal collaboration among institutions and teaching staff involved in agroforestry.
The participants in this initiative has agreed to tackle these need also at a regional level, through the formation of a Southeast Asian Naetwork for Agroforestry Education (SEANAFE). |
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