A Different Approach To Teaching Foresty

This paper is the result of an experiment which took place at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj with forestry teaching staff, when giving scientific explanations. The most memorable professors have always been those who did more than teach the subject matter of some discipline. They espoused an underlying theme that established a perspective or framework within which to structure the details of the subject being taught. This paper describes a theme that reveals the structure of certain scientific explanations relevant to a study of forestry. Because our suggestion emphasizes research explanations that belong to the field of forestry, it helps a student distinguish a sensible explanation from one that is not. The paper is intended to provide an example of a theme for an introduction to forestry that we have found useful. It is neither the only possible theme nor necessarily the best, but it does demonstrate what a “theme in a science course” means to us. Hopefully its usefulness will be apparent to the students. Some of the main results of our attempt are as follows: integration and implementation of the research in question into the teaching practice; breaking the psychological barriers such as fear of change and failure in new endeavours; resistance to changing one's teaching philosophy from a traditional to a more alternative mode of practice. The members of the teaching staff improved their teaching technique and students enjoyed a different way of acquiring knowledge.