Barbara Humberstone

A Pedagogy of Place: Outdoor Education for a Changing World

‘A Pedagogy of Place’ is an eclectic mix of writing and thought intertwined with significant writings on place by two Antipodean educators committed to place-responsive outdoor pedagogy. It is a welcome addition to the developing discourse in outdoor education surrounding the importance of place and localism. It is significant that contributions to these perspectives have largely emanated from North America and Australasia. In Europe, there has been until recently limited interest in the significance the specificity of place in outdoor education. This book is concerned with and draws largely upon Australian and New Zealand landscapes, places and stories yet its message is just as relevant to any locale in the world, not because its discourse is universalised or generalised but because of the very opposite. It emphasises the importance of situating and contextualising outdoor experience by and for participants, educators and students. The authors’ stated aim in writing this book is to go beyond common understandings of outdoor education and ‘call into question some of the taken-for-granted “truths” and underlying assumptions about what outdoor educators do and the nature of the educational experiences that are provided for their students’ (p. xiv), offering other possibilities for outdoor education practices. A Pedagogy of Place reflects a largely Australasian and North American perspective regarding being inheritors of a western, colonialist past and as such being recent settlers in a country that has remnants of an indigenous population with different cultural attitudes and perceptions regarding the land. As such, the particular concerns and examples given may not necessarily be generic or transferable to the UK and other non-Australasia countries and this is perhaps as it should be in a discourse regarding the specificity of place. However, the general critiques of attitudes prevalent in outdoor education and how the importance of the specific qualities of place has been largely ignored is of relevance for practitioners and educators in any country, and the suggested pedagogic practices of making relationships with place are applicable anywhere. The authors are acutely aware of the damage done to the ecology of Australia and New Zealand by colonialist western practices and how this differs from indigenous people’s conceptualisations and treatments of land. The authors’ consciousness of being descendants of settlers who imposed unsuitable European solutions provides a greater awareness and critical understanding of colonialism and its universalistic influences both on the landscape and the practices of outdoor education. After an introduction that argues for a place-responsive attitude in outdoor education, Chapter 1 begins with each author providing an autobiographical account of the role specificity of place in their identities

The ʻOutdoor Industryʼ as Social and Educational Phenomena:Gender and Outdoor Adventure/Education

Abstract This paper discusses social and cultural theory and tracts the ways in which gender has been conceptualised. It argues that the ‘outdoor industry’ in its various manifestations constitutes an aspect of society that can not be ignored. It suggests that outdoor adventure/education, like other dimensions of society, can usefully be subjected to critical examination. Having discussed perspectives surrounding the social construction of gender, the paper draws attention to classic work that has explored ideologies of femininity and the implication for women and men. The paper then goes on to argue that the more recent interactionist theories and cultural studies offer less deterministic and more insightful approaches to exploring peoples experiences of outdoor adventure/education. The concept of hegemonic masculinity is drawn upon to examine ‘the outdoor industry’ in light of the current ‘crisis of masculinity’. Finally, the paper raises further questions regarding outdoor adventure/education as a site of alternative femininities and masculinities and as counter-culture.

Embodiment and social and environmental action in nature-based sport: spiritual spaces

This paper explores the interrelationship of space, the elements and the embodied experiences of water-based physical activity. It draws upon alternative forms of research and representation to draw out the embodied nature of the experiences in exploring the practices of windsurfing amongst communities of windsurfers. It proposes that ethnography and autoethnography can provide for unique insights into the embodied experiences of the life-worlds of ‘being’ in nature. These inter-related methodologies provide particular insights into understanding when the body, grounded through its senses, makes sense of and interacts with its natural surroundings. It argues that autoethnography may provide methodologies for understanding and analysing connections between personal embodied nature-based experiences, culture and nature. This paper brings into play personal experience in windsurfing and autoethnographies of other nature-based sport to uncover connections between body, affects, emotions and the senses as the body engages with natural elements. It engages with expressions of spirituality, as alternative to ‘flow’, and the speculative notion of kinetic empathy to propose the concept of body pedagogics as analytically useful in exploring social and environmental action in local and global spaces.

A battle for control: exchanges of power in the subculture of snowboarding

This article uses a Gramscian perspective to explore the subculture of snowboarding, suggesting that cultural power is both resisted and reproduced. It examines the impact of commercialization on a snowboarding subculture from a participant perspective, gained from semi-structured interviews with boarders and skiers at a resort in British Columbia, Canada. The paper discusses new ways that snowboarders differentiate themselves from wider sporting cultures, in addition to how they do not outrightly reject the ideologies of mainstream sport but instead attempt to involve themselves more in the snowboarding industry. Through linking themselves with traditionally non-snowboarding institutions and creating alternatives to them, snowboarders become actively involved in the organization of snowboarding.

RE-CREATION AND CONNECTIONS IN AND WITH NATURE: Synthesizing Ecological and Feminist Discourses and Praxis?

This article explores the politics of nature and sport. Despite the impact of feminisms on sociology of sport discourses, feminist perspectives have been all but silent on environmental issues, drawing attention to nature merely as signifier but rarely as substance. In view of the environmental crisis, this article critiques feminist approaches to sport for disregarding ecological feminist discourses and argues that only a synthesis of ecological and feminist theories can be transformative. The socio-ecological ethical approach to sport is critiqued for its androcentricity and failure to recognize the significance of the double oppression of women and nature. Further, it is argued that nature-based sports may provide space not only for the reaffirmation of hegemonic masculinities but also for alternative gender identities and counter-cultures which may benefit nature. Evidence is presented to suggest that forms of nature-based sports and alternative movements may act as catalysts for both an individual and collective rethinking of human relations with nature (human and non-human). Finally the article calls for a linking of ecological and feminist approaches, which acknowledges plurivocal discourses and is grounded in interpretative research.

An ethnography of the outdoor classroom – how teachers manage risk in the outdoors

This article explores the approaches to risk that some teachers adopt when they are involved in facilitating outdoor activities. The research was carried out at a residential outdoor centre as part of a PhD study and a follow-up pilot project. The participants were primary school pupils, their teachers and the centre staff. For the purpose of this article, the term ‘teacher’ is used to refer to both visiting teachers accompanying the school groups and the centre staff. This research was eclectic. It took an ethnographic approach using participant observation and semi-structured interviews to collect a variety of data. Ethnography was considered as the most appropriate for this research because it puts an emphasis on understanding the perceptions and cultures of the people and organisations studied. The findings of the research have shown that, on occasion, teachers take a controlling approach when facilitating outdoor activities in order to manage the perceived risk of being in the outdoors. This tended to result in the disempowerment of the children and put the teachers in a position of power, which had serious implications for the pupils’ learning experience. By giving the children specific instructions, and mainly focusing on maintaining discipline during the activities, teachers do not allow their pupils to workout how to deal with risk. The article argues that this had a negative impact on the educational process by taking away opportunities for learning from the children.

Positive emotions: passionate scholarship and student transformation

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of getting, knowing and doing. A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative ‘emotion-transition framework’ to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the feeling discourse, the thinking discourse (epistemological self) and the wider life-self (ontological) discourse.

Speaking out: perspectives of gay and lesbian practitioners in outdoor education in the UK

Outdoor education has been shaped historically and culturally by many influences. Physically challenging activities out of doors have been appropriated by a number of traditions. These include militaristic, educational and developmental ideologies. Arguably, central to these ideologies are heterosexual, white middle class values. While women have sought to challenge this and feminist and pro-feminist research is evident, very little research has been undertaken into sexuality in relation to teacher or practitioner perspective and experience. Consequently, gay and lesbian voices within outdoor education are all but silenced. This paper explores the perspectives of three lesbian and four gay men who work in the UK outdoor education ‘industry’. In-depth interviews were held with the participants exploring a variety of issues relating to their life histories and their experiences of working in a predominantly heterosexist outdoor education culture. This paper focuses upon the ways in which the participants perceived the need to conceal their lesbian and gay identities and the consequential effects of managing their identities.

Well-being and outdoor pedagogies in primary schooling: The nexus of well-being and safety

Society today is inundated by a multitude of messages regarding the risks and dangers that affect youngsters, with media constantly talking about ‘cotton wool’ kids (see Furedi, 1997, 2001, 2006) and an ‘obesity epidemic’ (see Wright and Harwood, 2009). A social panic has been created by the media, which ignores the positive outcomes of risk-taking, sensationalises risks, and focuses on the dangers of the world. In popular discourse contradictions are in evidence, on the one hand adults are concerned about the safety of young children; on the other hand many argue that society wraps children in ‘cotton wool’ such that they are denied opportunities to play outdoors for fear of accidents. Research has shown that negotiating risks and relating them to individual capacities is essential for the development of young children and their ability to learn from their mistakes and become aware of their personal health and safety (Fenech, Sumsion, & Goodfellow, 2006). This paper is based on a pilot study that explores young children and their significant others’ perceptions and experiences of risk and safety, looking particularly at the ways in which experiences of outdoor learning may affect the well-being of children. Using an ethnographic approach the research examines how parents and teachers define well-being, and how being in the outdoors is seen to affect pupils’ well-being. This paper, a work in progress, asks if and how outdoor activities, through outdoor learning, contribute to the physical and emotional well-being of young children, briefly touching on theories of power and control.

The jouissance of learning: evolutionary musings on the pleasures of learning in higher education

This paper presents a philosophy and method for an ongoing investigation into the cause and effect of student emotions in higher education. In particular, it presents the possibilities for exploring students’ positive emotions as ‘jouissance’ experiences linked to the transgression of power relations and social structures. The paper takes the form of ‘evolutionary musings’ that guide the reader through a confessional account of the research programme, the epistemological and methodological challenges, the limits of data already produced, and suggestions for a future approach. The musings maintain that descriptions of causal relationships of pedagogic action and the phenomenology of students’ feelings of gratification are not enough to plausibly interpret the locatedness and meaning of emotions, and that the emotional nexus is shaped by and continues to inform social relationships.