Neoliberal Ideologies in Outdoor Adventure Education: Barriers to Social Justice and Strategies for Change

Warner, Robert P.; Meerts-Brandsma, Lisa; Rose, Jeff

doi:10.18666/jpra-2019-9609

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…The current paradigm in park tourism, recreation and visitation, however, is that people who are socially or economically disadvantaged visit parks less, or not at all (Boyd et al, 2018;Buckley et al, 2016Buckley et al, , 2019Warner et al, 2020;Zanon et al, 2019). This population subsector is also more likely to suffer from poor mental health.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature tourism and mental health: parks, happiness, and causation

Buckley

2020

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

131

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Park tourism is correlated with better mental health, with high economic value, but some aspects of causal mechanisms have remained unresolved. I interviewed 238 outdoor nature and adventure tourists of all ages and backgrounds, at subtropical national parks in Queensland, Australia. I asked whether they visit parks because they are happy, or they are happy because they visit parks. A large majority, 82%, picked the latter. Of those asked, 87.5% reported short-term emotional benefits; 60%, medium-term recovery from stress; and 20%, long-term changes in worldview. Research priorities include: economic scale; experiential components and commercial design for different market segments; and tests of mental health benefits for tourism more generally.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature tourism and mental health: parks, happiness, and causation

Buckley

2020

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

131

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“…Roberts (2012) elaborates on the theoretical perspectives of experiential education and identifies four "currents": Romantic, Pragmatist, Critical Theory and Market Rationality. This analysis have been used in research on outdoor education, for example, by Mannion and Lynch (2016) focusing on "place" in education, and Warner et al (2020) regarding the emergence of neoliberal ideologies in outdoor adventure education. However, we have not been able to identify any research applying Roberts' analysis to uteskole, and we believe that this could be a useful framework to guide our understanding of uteskole teachers' intentions and practice.…”

Section: Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical and practical, but rarely integrated: Norwegian primary school teachers’ intentions and practices of teaching outside the classroom

Winje

Løndal

2021

Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education

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This study investigates teachers’ intentions and practices related to teaching outside the classroom. We report on three months of fieldwork consisting of participatory observations and qualitative interviews of teachers in two Norwegian primary schools practising weekly uteskole [outdoor school]. We find that the teachers’ intentions for uteskole are to facilitate first-hand experiences for their pupils. The teachers organise and teach uteskole in two distinct ways: 1) friluftsliv activities [outdoor living activities] and 2) theoretical learning activities. The connections between friluftsliv activities and theoretical learning activities are seldom emphasised. Furthermore, the teachers rarely organise theoretical learning activities that entail pupils’ transacting with their surroundings. We discuss how the teachers’ work can be understood through the Romantic and the Pragmatist perspectives of experiential education and through the representational epistemology of traditional schooling. We outline how a transactional epistemology, operationalised as the “multi-modal model of knowing”, can support teachers in facilitating transaction between the pupils and the environment outdoors and aid in establishing continuity between learning activities outdoors and indoors. We argue that these are important factors that can enhance uteskole as a teaching method for facilitating deep learning in Norwegian primary education.

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“…Scholars and practitioners in the field of outdoor adventure education (OAE) have long called for the advancement of social justice within the field [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. These calls have been motivated in part by a recognition of ongoing social, economic and demographic changes to which the field must adapt in order to effectively address the needs of an increasingly diverse society [3,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These calls have been motivated in part by a recognition of ongoing social, economic and demographic changes to which the field must adapt in order to effectively address the needs of an increasingly diverse society [3,13]. They have also been motivated in part by a recognition of inherent dilemmas and contradictions in the field that inhibit the ability of OAE professionals to meaningfully promote social justice through their work [6,8,10,13]. Warren wrote: "In the past, the innocent utopian vision of an outdoor course might have allowed a disconnection from prevailing social issues, but the scale of the dialogue no longer allows complete disassociation" [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been numerous other such calls to advance social justice in the field of outdoor adventure education, many framing this endeavor as a moral imperative [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Although there has been little consensus on how best to accomplish this goal [13], one common element among these calls is that they are all typically grounded in John Rawls' [14] theory of justice-a distributive approach to justice in which all social goods should be distributed equally among the members of a society, unless an unequal distribution of goods would be to everyone's advantage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the Inclusive Praxis of Outward Bound Instructors

2020

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Equity and inclusion are critical issues that need to be addressed in outdoor adventure education. Although some literature identifies inclusive practices for enhancing equity in outdoor adventure education, most research does not situate these practices within the contexts in which they were created and used. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore outdoor adventure education instructors’ inclusive praxis, and the conditions that influenced their praxis on their courses and in their instructing experiences. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with ten instructors from four Outward Bound schools in the USA. The instructors varied in their gender, school, types of programs facilitated, and duration of employment with Outward Bound. Our inductive analysis of the interview data focused on the identification of themes illustrating the characteristics of instructors’ inclusive praxis, as well as the conditions that influenced their praxis. Themes emerged from our analysis that highlighted the macro and micro conditions that set the stage for instructors’ inclusive praxis, which focused on creating spaces that fostered inclusive group cultures on their courses. The findings from this study may be a useful starting point for enhancing the instructors’ role in fostering equity and inclusion on outdoor adventure education courses. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

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Neoliberal Ideologies in Outdoor Adventure Education: Barriers to Social Justice and Strategies for Change

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Nature tourism and mental health: parks, happiness, and causation

Nature tourism and mental health: parks, happiness, and causation

Theoretical and practical, but rarely integrated: Norwegian primary school teachers’ intentions and practices of teaching outside the classroom

Exploring the Inclusive Praxis of Outward Bound Instructors

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