This paper investigates how risk perception amongst teachers within an outdoor educational initiative, Forest School, both shape and are shaped by their understandings of childhood, pedagogy and their own professional identity.Drawing on a social constructionist perspective in theorizing risk and childhood, the paper argues that contemporary, hyper-sensitised concerns regarding children s vulnerability emanate from both fears of the modern world and the proclivity towards over-protection which these fears precipitate. Rather than treating this hyper-sensitivity as irrational or paranoid, the paper draws on socio-cultural theories and qualitative methods to interrogate how risk is perceived, managed and performed by teachers within an initiative which aims to reintroduce risk into children s lives. The research found that while these teachers motivations to participate in Forest School were derived from a desire to expose children to formative risk-taking in the outdoors, the hegemonic cultural and institutional risk aversion which they were attempting to counter, aligned with their contested occupational identity, created tensions in how they managed and performed risk which militated against the full realisation of a Forest School pedagogy. permeates the childhood in crisis thesis: that children are at risk from the absence of risk itself-particularly risk-taking behaviours within outdoor play. This denial of formative risk exposure is the consequence of both children s technologically-mediated, indoor, sedentary lifestyle, and adults overprotection, caused by fears of the modern world: thus parental hyper-sensitivity to risk, and the protectionary impulses this engenders, is itself limiting children s freedom and having a negative impact upon their physical and psychological wellbeing. This highly reflexive, self-reinforcing, concern about concern proceeds: children are at risk and childhood is under threat, primarily from social changes wrought from technological advancement, and, thus, need to be protected from the encroachment of the adult world; adult (over)protection is itself corrupting childhood through denying children formative, risky, experience; adults attempts at protecting children and preserving childhood are part of the problem, rather than the solution; childhood is at risk, from both the encroachment and the protection of the adult world. This hyper reflexive concern is evidence for Beck s general reflexive individualization thesis Beck, 1992), and his and Beck-Gernsheim s 99 illustration of how such reflexive individualisation colonises even the most intimate inter-personal relationships.As an antidote to both technological over-exposure and this perceived overprotection, there have been shifts amongst parents, campaigners and advocates (organisations such as Wild Nature, Playing Out and Project Wild Thing); policy
