Abstract
Instructional textbooks can help educators to promote better forest education programs. We analyzed and compared ten forest education textbooks to find a policy of developing texts to facilitate better understandings of the multiple functions of forest by examining how the textbook contents addressed these multiple functions. We found that about half of all programs have already been developed to encompass the multiple functions of forest, and are suitable for use in forest-education programs. The ten textbooks were classified into four contextual groups, according to the relationship between a particular topic related to an education program and its interpretation in the textbook, as follows. Group a: textbooks that contained no interpretation; group b: textbooks that contained several interpretations, and each interpretation corresponded to a particular program; group c: textbooks that contained several interpretations and each interpretation bound several programs; and group d: textbooks in which all programs were accounted for under one interpretation. Textbooks with several interpretations (groups b and c) contained more programs that were well-linked to forest functions than the other textbooks. To promote the multiple functions of forest in forest education, textbooks should contain separate interpretations that address forest functions, and clear links should be established between each program and its interpretation.
