Project Description
This project develops practical guidance to help training package developers, course designers, trainers, and assessors design and deliver programs that support learner diversity across the forest and wood products sectors. Interpersonal and cultural skills improve communication, teamwork and safe work behaviours. The result is a more respectful learning experience and a more inclusive workforce.
The aim is to embed inclusive principles across content, delivery, assessment, and support, so that training programs are accessible, relevant, and effective for all learners.
New Guide Supports Inclusive Training Across the Industry
ForestWorks, in collaboration with Business Skills Viability, has developed a practical guide to help trainers, assessors, resource creators and training package developers design and deliver gender and culturally inclusive training across forestry-related VET programs.
The guide was refined with input from major forestry and wood products RTOs and Skills Insight Jobs and Skills Council to ensure it turns inclusion goals into clear, usable steps that support fairness, equity and workforce diversity while meeting compliance requirements.
Why This Matters
Inclusive training environments don’t happen by chance. They are built through skills, awareness and consistent practice. Trainers and assessors need to recognise and apply interpersonal and cultural capabilities when working with learners.
What Has Been Delivered
A ready-to-use guide to gender and culturally inclusive training for forestry vocational education and training that supports delivery, assessment and resource development. It provides practical advice, examples and tools across five themes:
The guide is already informing several Forestry Workforce Training Program (FWTP) projects and will continue to shape how inclusivity is built into training and workforce development across the sector.
Further Actions Underway
- Collaborate with TAFE Gippsland (lead for Projects 3, 16 and 18) and the ForestWorks team (lead for Projects 19 and 20) to align pilot course materials and training/assessment resources with the guide’s principles.
- Publish the guide in the Virtual Resource Library (Project 21) to enable sector-wide access.
Inclusive training, stronger participation
Practical guidance for change
Project 15 developed practical, industry-specific guidance to help create more accessible, relevant and equitable training across Australia’s forest, paper and wood products industry.
The project produced the Guide for Gender and Culturally Inclusive Training in the Forest, Paper and Wood Products Industry for training resource creators, trainers and assessors, and training package developers.
Why inclusive training matters
Women represented only 23% of the industry workforce in 2023. Participation continues to be affected by unclear career pathways, limited access to mentors and role models, uneven training opportunities, low industry visibility, unconscious bias and additional barriers experienced by rural and First Nations women.
Training can reinforce established patterns or help remove them. Deliberate changes to language, representation, accessibility, flexibility, facilitation and assessment can improve learner confidence, engagement and participation.
Turning inclusion into practice
The Guide was developed through evidence review, industry consultation and refinement. It brings together inclusive learning content, accessible delivery, fair assessment, cultural awareness and training package design in one practical framework.
Its development drew on flexible and accessible approaches trialled by TAFE Gippsland through Forestry Workforce Training Program Projects 3, 16 and 18, including mentoring and peer support.
The Guide has also informed improvements to ForestEdu resources, including gender-neutral language and more diverse, representative imagery.
Practical tools included
The Guide provides ready-to-use resources covering:
- Language: gender-neutral alternatives to gendered terminology
- Accessibility: a WCAG 2.1 compliance checklist for web-based learning
- Assessment: an inclusive assessment checklist, criteria framework and practical assessment questions
- Compliance: summaries of relevant standards, policies and sex discrimination legislation.
Who can use the Guide?
- Training resource creators: Use the Guide to develop inclusive content through role-based language, diverse case studies and visuals, accessible digital resources and equitable assessment tasks.
- Trainers and assessors: Apply practical guidance on participation, flexible delivery, culturally safe facilitation, mentoring, fair assessment and the intentional teaching of inclusion-related skills.
- Training package developers: Use access and equity guidance, real-world examples, reasonable-adjustment strategies and inclusive language and visual guidance when developing companion volumes and other supporting materials.
Five steps towards consistent inclusive practice
- Review training content: Check language, visuals, examples, case studies and assessment tasks for hidden assumptions, stereotypes or gaps in representation.
- Open access: Use flexible, modular, online and regional delivery options. Incorporate mentoring, peer support, cultural awareness, anti-racism and inclusive leadership practices.
- Remove assessment barriers: Focus on demonstrated, job-relevant competency, recognise potential bias and document reasonable adjustments.
- Teach and assess inclusion-related skills: Intentionally develop cultural competence, empathy, active listening, inclusive communication, teamwork and leadership.
- Embed inclusion in training package design: Provide practical companion-volume guidance on access and equity, diverse examples and reasonable-adjustment strategies.
Ten inclusion skills
The Guide recommends that inclusion-related skills be intentionally taught and assessed through the core units of industry qualifications. It addresses ten inclusion skills.
From better training to stronger participation
More inclusive training practice can help learners feel represented, respected and supported while giving trainers clearer practical guidance.
With sustained adoption, this approach has the potential to support:
- greater learner confidence, engagement and completion
- clearer training and career pathways
- broader workforce participation
- improved attraction and retention
- safer and more respectful workplaces
- stronger workforce capability and productivity
- the industry’s long-term sustainability.
Achieving this potential will require collaboration, endorsement and consistent application across the training system.
The Guide for Gender and Culturally Inclusive Training in the Forest, Paper and Wood Products Industry is available for free download from the ForestEdu Library or directly below.
ForestEdu is a central platform for accessing industry-specific training resources, strengthening professional networks, and addressing workforce capability needs across the forest, wood, and paper sectors. The platform was developed for learners, employers, and training providers as part of the Forestry Workforce Training Program, which is funded by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
