http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-6622
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ABSTRACT
School websites are one way in which school leaders inform the public about their school’s vision, values, achievements and the learning opportunities on offer in a way that highlights its distinctiveness in the most positive light. If outdoor education is perceived as a valued learning context and/or helps to differentiate one school from another, it is likely that it would be reflected on a school’s website. An interpretive thematic analysis of the websites of 20% of the secondary schools in New Zealand suggested that outdoor education has a presence in schools, although the magnitude of this presence depended on the priorities school leaders wished to promote. The positive outcomes and opportunities afforded by outdoor education were portrayed to emphasize a school’s appeal. However, policy and design constraints of websites restricted teachers’ input into their content, making it somewhat challenging to gauge the relationship between the presence of outdoor education on a school website and the quality of its pedagogical practice.
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Notes on contributors
Margie Campbell-Price
Margie Campbell-Price, PhD, is a senior lecturer in secondary teacher education at the University of Otago College of Education in New Zealand. Her career has included teaching and leadership in outdoor education in secondary schools and pre-service teacher education. Since working in teacher education, her teaching and research interests have expanded to embrace more holistic cross-curricular experiences in environments beyond the classroom. Her research mostly focuses on how learning is perceived and used to justify temporally and spatially different experiences that range from short duration local experiences to those that involve multiple weeks and distant locations.