Teaching wildlife tourism management: reflections on culture, nature, and wildlife

ABSTRACT

This article describes of an elective wildlife tourism management course at the University of Lapland. This teaching/learning course focused on blending theories used in place-based education to help students better grasp and explore their philosophical understanding of culture, nature, and wildlife and how these affect management actions. The research used arts-based methodologies as a tool to document and facilitate individual and group reflection. Experiential learning was used to explore how managers can help to create sustainable places to live, work, and visit through the co-creation of more ethical management practices that benefits local communities, incorporates a sense of place, and protects the ecosphere. The main outcomes of the course were to inspire further learning about environmental philosophy outside of the classroom and to help students push the boundaries of their own philosophical understanding of culture, nature, and wildlife.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based methodologies
• environmental philosophy
• place-based education
• nature pedagogy
• experiential learning
• interdisciplinary

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Multidimensional Tourism Institute at the University of Lapland, particularly Outi Rantala, Salla Jutila, and Jose Carlos Garcia-Rosell for their support and encouragement during my time in Finland. I would also like to thank Laufey Haraldsdóttir at Hólar University for encouraging me to develop this teaching/learning experiment; and Erasmus+ for support of travel funding that helped make an exchange like this possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There is a list of Icebreaker activities found at https://www.salto-youth.net/.

2. This game was added after students’ feedback. See http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1591 to see other possible games that could be played outdoors (or indoors) with your classroom.

3. Adapted from Mindfulness & Nature: A Toolkit for Youth Work. http://viajealasostenibilidad.org/mindyourmind/

4. See the ATACC Handbook page 27 at http://www.ifm-sei.org/files/up/ATACC-publication-web.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This paper describes a course that was developed for an Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Teaching and Training under grant number [IS-TS2018-85571] that gave funding for travel that allowed for the course to take place.