Students’ imaginings of spaces of learning in Outdoor and Environmental Education

Abstract

In this article, I interrogate students’ stories about the spaces and places in a tertiary Outdoor and Environmental Education course that support and shape their environmental ethics. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study, I explore the ways in which particular sites of learning (outdoor, practical learning) are privileged and how particular stories of outdoor spaces get reproduced. I employ the work of poststructuralist geography scholar Doreen Massey in my analysis to highlight the intersections between space, relations of power and identity. This analysis also underscores the simultaneity of multiple and conflicting stories around Outdoor Education’s outdoor (practical) and indoor (theoretical) learning spaces. I conclude by drawing on Elizabeth Ellsworth’s work on anomalous places of learning to explore some of the spaces in-between the indoor/outdoor binary as a way of interrupting and re-imagining places and spaces of learning in Outdoor Education.

Keywords:

• Outdoor and Environmental Education
• environmental ethics
• place
• space
• poststructuralism

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the participants in this study for their willingness to share their stories and opinions. The author would also like to thank the reviewers for their very helpful comments on this article.

Notes

^1. This view is not limited to Victorian Outdoor Education scholars. What I am suggesting is that the ‘significance of place’ is a common theme in Victorian scholarly writing.

^2. While Martin’s understanding of ‘critical’ Outdoor Education has been widely referenced in the Australian literature, it is recognised that the meanings ascribed to critical Outdoor Education are not singular or static. For example, poststructural perspectives have increasingly become more prominent in Outdoor Education research and scholarship (including my own). See Payne (2002) for an elaboration of some different interpretations of critical Outdoor Education in Victoria.

^3. I use ‘reformist’ to describe an environmentalism that is aligned to the dominant social paradigm (Fien, 1995) and follows normalised environmental practices (or prescribed moral codes; Foucault, 1990) such as recycling waste, ‘saving’ water and so on.

^4. A year later the expedition (a 16-day walk in the Victorian Alps) eclipses the Murray trip in terms of favourites, but I think the duration of the expedition is its most significant influence and in this regard atypical of most of the trips that students experience as part of the course.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lou Preston

Lou Preston lectures in Humanities at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Her current research draws on poststructuralist perspectives to critically analyse the importance of place and the spatial dimensions of pedagogy in social and environmental education.