The Impact of NOLS Rocky Mountain on the Development of a Sense of Place

Abstract

Background: One of the core environmental studies learning objectives at NOLS is for students to develop a “sense of place” by experiencing wilderness and exploring relationships with their surroundings. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore how students report developing a sense of place after completing a course based out of NOLS Rocky Mountain in Lander, Wyoming. A secondary focus of this study was to understand sense-of-place development through past NOLS research on learning mechanisms. Methodology/Approach: Data were analyzed from 511 NOLS students who answered the open-ended question: Did NOLS help you develop a personal relationship to the places you visited? If so, how? This study utilized a grounded theory approach to design and analysis. Findings/Conclusions: Analyses revealed nine core categories related to developing an expeditionary and wilderness-focused sense of place. The two predominant themes supporting a sense of place were the ability of a NOLS course to facilitate nature appreciation and specific instructor-oriented and NOLS structure-oriented learning mechanisms. Implications: This article offers insights into how NOLS supports a sense of place, clarifies related learning mechanisms, and discusses curricular considerations related to facilitating person–environment relationships within landscapes understood as wilderness.

(Re)Making Sense of Place in Outdoor Adventure Education

“…SOP in OAE proposes that by learning about and caring for the natural environment, participating in a wide variety of backcountry experiences, and engaging in activities that advance individual connections to place, learners can and should build deep connections of care for the natural environment (Goodman, 2022a;Hutson, 2014aHutson, , 2014bSanger, 1997). Scholars in OAE (Barnes, 2017;Hutson, 2014aHutson, , 2014bHutson et al, 2019) advanced important interpretations of SOP that inform practice and pedagogy across the field. Hutson (2014a) forwarded a conception of SOP in OAE that drew on the study of place scholarship in leisure studies outlined above, and specifically built on the place attachment scholarship of Low and Altman (1992).…”

“…Research in OAE and related fields, such as leisure studies, outdoor experiential education, and environmental education, has posited that OAE programming can problematically reproduce and/or draw on dominant ways of being around patriarchy and whiteness (Kennedy & Russell, 2020;Rao & Roberts, 2018;Roberts, 2015;Rogers & Rose, 2019;Vernon & Seaman, 2018;Warren, 2016;Warren et al, 2018). Multiple scholars across a variety of disciplines have offered valuable examinations of SOP in OAE or related fields (Byrne & Wolch, 2009;Gruenewald, 2003;Hutson et al, 2019;Kosek, 2006;Roberts, 2015;Vernon & Seaman, 2018;Wattchow & Brown, 2011). As I have noted elsewhere (Goodman, 2022a), these critiques are foundational to a project of investigation and renovation of SOP in OAE.…”

“…For example, although Wattchow and Brown's (2011) important critique of SOP considered the violent histories that impact outdoor spaces in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand and helped OAE to rethink how SOP may reproduce social inequities through discourses of nature and belonging, their place-responsive pedagogy did not offer SOP in OAE as a site of intervention to disrupt colonial racial capitalism (Goodman, 2022a). Similarly, while Hutson's et al (2019) salient scholarship suggested that SOP in OAE is an area for further curricular expansion and inclusion of Indigenous perspectives, they did not conceptualize a critical SOP that can theorize power relations within OAE SOP curricula. In addition, although Vernon and Seaman (2018) offered an important analysis of OAE as informal whiteness education, they did not apply colonial racial capitalist frameworks to understand the ways in which OAE, and SOP, in particular, can reproduce hegemonic colonial racial capitalist relations in OAE around place and belonging (Goodman, 2022a).…”

The mediating effect of geospatial thinking on the relationship between family capital and sense of place

“…In general, sense of place is influenced by many factors. Personal factors including demographic factors such as residential address (urban and suburban), gender, age, education, and length of residence are included ( Hutson et al, 2019 ; Collins-Kreiner, 2020 ; Leather and Thorsteinsson, 2021 ). Environmental factors are related to the physical or social environment.…”