Examining the risk-safety paradox in outdoor education from a Taoist perspective: a case study of a Chinese outdoor education experience

ABSTRACT

There is a paradox between the demands for safety and the productive value of risk in outdoor education and adventure learning. This seems particularly to be the case in Chinese culture, policy, and empirical practice of outdoor education. This paper aims to utilise the rich cultural context and philosophical perspectives of China to broaden the landscape of outdoor education knowledge. Chinese cultural intricacies and insights from Taoist philosophy offer an unconventional perspective for redefining traditional binary concepts of risk and safety, relevant to outdoor education as it is practised in China. A Taoist lens is used to analyse Chinese college students’ documented reflections on their experience of outdoor education through a case study. The convergence of Taoist philosophy and culturally embedded pedagogical practices in China presents an innovative pathway for re-imagining the existing terrain of Western adventure learning research and teaching norms in outdoor education.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk-safety
• outdoor education
• China
• Taoist philosophy
• Yin-Yang
• technology

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the Journal’s editor, Prof Jan Wright, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and stimulating comments on previous drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China: [grant no 20JZD052].