Abstract
The purpose of this study is to discuss the structure of effective forest environmental education by taking into account the personal developmental stage, and to analyze participants, educational aims, and implementation content in anecdotal reports (162 cases) of forest environmental education programs researched by the Forestry Agency of Japan related to the personal developmental stage. The participants, aims, implementation content, and challenges for forest environmental education are analyzed by means of a text mining approach. As a result, the intended participants of forest environmental education are mainly children, and the educational aims are related to knowledge, understanding, and awareness on forests and forestry. Implementation content is often based on the experience type such as nature and tree observation (73 cases), woodworking (71 cases), thinning (42 cases), tree planting (33 cases), and so on. Forest environment education may have been regarded as an experience for children to gain knowledge and understanding. In order to realize the final goal of actual“participation"by increasing the implementation amongst adolescents, there is a need for implementation of the objectives and content tailored to the personal developmental stage, because participants, implementation aims, and implementation content tend to be biased toward child participants.
