The role of ‘pracademics’ in education and development of adventure sport professionals

Abstract

Understanding and exploiting the synergy between theory and practice lies at the heart of effective education for outdoor professionals. Accordingly, and in an attempt to stimulate debate, this paper conceptualises the interaction between theory and practice in the context of the education of outdoor professionals. We identify issues specific to the often separated worlds of practice and academia. While acknowledging those distinct skills and competencies, however, we also explore a mid-role; that of the 'pracademic' or scientistpractitioner or practioner scholar, considering behaviours that may encourage greater collaborative work to inform the process and implementation of the education of outoor professionals.

Learning the trade – recognising the needs of aspiring adventure sports professionals

“…This NDM aspect is less cognitively demanding in simpler tasks but prone to bias and decision-making traps (McCammon, 2004). In complex tasks, the process appears equally cognitively demanding because of the time frame context and sub-optimal information (Collins & Collins, 2019b). Additionally, a metacognitive ) aspect (i.e.…”

“…During pre and post-activity, CDM is used to a greater extent and weighting than NDM because time can be allocated to a more complete process of information gathering and verification of its reliability. This aspect includes the planning of a range of decisions on venue choice, activity, logistics and equipment, and one that is often implemented initially via a 'strawman plan' (Collins & Collins, 2019a). 1 In action, NDM is predominant in response to or when dealing with short-term challenges, ambiguous information and the hyperdynamic environmental pressures commonly experienced in adventurous sports settings.…”

“…A cognitive apprenticeship (CA) is a graduated multi-stage approach (Larsen, 2015;Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1988) that has been highlighted as a potential method for developing the cognitive and PJDM skills associated with adventure sports coaching and leadership , 2019a. The CA has been advocated and applied in a range of activities, such as reading, writing, mathematics, clinical skills, teaching, web-based learning, and musical improvisation (Collins et al, 1988;de Bruin, 2019;Järvelä, 1996;Woolley & Jarvis, 2007).…”

“…The hyper-dynamic nature of working in authentic adventurous environments is ever present (Christian, Berry, & Kearney, 2017) along with the risk, and we suggest adaptability and flexibility may be better facilitated throughout the developmental process, with a clear focus on developing adaptive expertise (Hatano & Inagaki, 1984) from the outset. Adaptive expertise requires the AP's to make effective judgements and decisions based on a comprehension of the situational demands by selecting from a range of appropriate options (Collins & Collins, 2019b). Consequently, we contend that along with adaptive expertise, decision-making and judgment making skills are integrated early in the development of AP's.…”

Guest editorialPracademia: exploring the possibilities, power and politics of boundary-spanners straddling the worlds of practice and scholarship

“…Possibilities, power and politics Although perhaps tempting to dismiss "pracademic" as simply another buzzword or a meaningless addition to edubabble that "involves the ridiculously fluffy words and silly sloganeering intended to obfuscate issues and confuse non-educators" (Woolman, 2018), the term actually has a thirty-year history and is most often attributed to Nalbandian (1994) who wrote "Reflections of a 'pracademic' on the logic of politics and administration" for the journal Public Administration Review. In the scholarly literature, pracademic has appeared across a number of disciplines and with multiple uses but has only recently begun to gain traction in the field of education (Collins and Collins, 2019;Dickinson et al, 2020;Hollweck and Doucet, 2020;Netolicky, 2020b). Although pracademic has different meanings across the literature, most often the term describes those in their field who simultaneously straddle the dual worlds of practice and scholarship, industry work and research (Powell et al, 2018).…”