The Place of Experience and the Experience of Place: Intersections Between Sustainability Education and Outdoor Learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Hill

AbstractAs social, economic and environmental issues have become more prominent in the 21st century, there has been increased critical scrutiny into the ways that outdoor learning interacts with sustainability issues and concepts. As a result, a number of discourses have emerged which interrogate human/nature relationships in traditional outdoor education and propose greater engagement with place-responsive or sustainable approaches. Drawing on research with teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article explores possible intersections between sustainability education outdoor learning. Accordingly, this article focuses on two key ideas: First, the nexus of experience and place offers significant promise for educational endeavours that seek to educate for a sustainable future. Second, traditional conceptions of wilderness as a pedagogical site, can be problematic for outdoor education programs which seek to claim the ground of sustainability. While there is much that can be gained from journeys in remote pristine environments, not all of these experiences necessarily lead to the development of attitudes, understandings, skills, and motivation to live more sustainably. Furthermore, approaches to outdoor learning that seek to develop connection to and care for remote, pristine places, at the same time ignoring more local or impacted places, could present a dichotomous view of ‘nature’ to students, thereby disrupting efforts to educate for sustainability.

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-432
Author(s):  
Patrick T. Maher

Author(s):  
Celia Haig-Brown ◽  
Te Kawehau Hoskins

Indigenous teacher education has proven to be a powerful influence in the resurgence of Indigenous cultures and languages globally. In Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand, while there are numerous distinctions between the countries in size, linguistic and cultural diversity, and the histories of Indigenous peoples and colonization, an Indigenous commitment to schooling has shaped long-term and recent aspirations in both contexts. Within Canada, the proliferation of Indigenous teacher education programs is a direct result of a 1972 landmark national policy document Indian Control of Indian Education. This document written by Indigenous leaders in response to the Canadian government was the culmination of a decades-long, relentless commitment to creating the best possible schooling systems for Indigenous students within the provinces and territories. In 2015, despite some significant gains, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada completed its work articulating Calls to Action that reinforce the original recommendations, particularly the focus on Indigenous control of education. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, the establishment of Māori language schooling pathways and Māori medium teacher education programs has been made possible by activism focused on the recognition of Indigenous-Māori rights to language and culture guaranteed by the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Forms of constitutional recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi mean that New Zealand endorses a social policy of biculturalism. From the 1970s and 1980s, responses to exclusionary and racist colonial policies and practices have led to the creation of teacher education programs in both Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand transforming universities and schools and establishing spaces of Indigenous authority, activism and expertise. While the pace of change varies radically from place to place and from institution to institution, and the specific contexts of the two countries differ in important ways, the innumerable Indigenous graduates of the programs make ongoing contributions to Indigenizing, decolonizing, and educating Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities alike. The growth and strengthening of an Indigenous education sector have led to significant policy and curriculum reforms across the education systems and to ongoing engagement in critique, advocacy, research, and practice. Throughout their development, Indigenous leadership and control of the programs remain the immediate and long-range goals.


2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris North ◽  
Garrett Hutson

Domestic and international tourists have major impacts on Aotearoa/New Zealand, both positive and negative. In 2010, tourism was the biggest export earner and continues to grow. Environmental consequences of tourism are also growing. Ways of addressing the environmental impacts caused by a mobile society continue to be debated from a variety of practical and theoretical positions. Place-based approaches are a logical discussion focus in addressing these types of social and environmental problems but may be associated with environmental myopia. Tourism, mobility and the principles of environmental education programs such as Leave No Trace are all contested topics within the place-based discourse. This article discusses these tensions and proposes an expansion of place-based and cosmopolitan approaches, with the Leave No Trace Aotearoa/New Zealand campaign presented as an example. The article concludes with possible implications of a more bifocal approach for environmental educators.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne Mercier ◽  
Catherine Powell ◽  
Georgina Langdon-Pole ◽  
Daleki (Fole) Finau ◽  
Karen Hicks ◽  
...  

This study took a qualitative look at an Aotearoa/New Zealand-based positive youth development outdoor-education program in schools using the 5 Cs model of positive youth development. The viewpoints of young people, parents, and teachers were gathered, providing an opportunity to explore additional perspectives of the 5 Cs. All 5 Cs were seen to be present in the program and the 6th C of contribution was also observed. The Cs of competence, confidence and connection featured strongly, whilst the C of connection appeared to be important to young people’s experience of the program. Young people and adults prioritized different outcomes, with adults focusing more on future impacts and young people identifying more immediate benefits. The findings of this study add to an understanding of the 5 Cs model beyond the American context and highlight areas for future research.


2008 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Craig

This article is based upon a month-long survey of the reportage of New Zealand environmental news in the country's metropolitan daily and Sunday newspapers. The study examines topics such as the coverage of different environmental issues, the frequency and distribution of different types of sources accessed for the news stories, the distribution of environmental news across different sections of the newspapers, and the ratio of news stories to opinion articles. The article concludes that ‘the environment’ is often interpreted through an economic and business framework in newspaper reportage. This is reflected in the prominence of particular kinds of environmental issues in the survey, such as climate change and electricity/energy production and consumption, and the dominance of bureaucratic and corporate/industry group sources in environmental news. The increasingly problematic nature of ‘the environment’, and the growing importance of the impact of environmental change on economic life, particularly in a national economy that remains heavily reliant on agriculture, is evident in a high proportion of ‘op-ed’ articles in the survey and a high proportion of environmental news stories in the business sections of the newspapers.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Alcock ◽  
Jenny Ritchie

© 2018, Outdoor Education Australia. Early childhood care and education services in Aotearoa New Zealand drew initially on the Fröbelian model of the kindergarten or ‘children’s garden’. Later models such as the Kōhanga Reo movement, the highly respected curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa, and the Enviroschools programme are grounded in te ao Māori, Māori worldviews, that feature a strong connectedness to place, and a deep sense of a spiritual inter-relationship with the land, mountains, rivers, and oceans. This article considers how the imported Scandinavian/European/UK models of ‘forest schools’ might fit within this context. To illustrate early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa (New Zealand) we draw upon research conducted in early childhood settings in this country that illuminates children’s experience in the outdoors. We draw upon critical early childhood scholarship to theorise this situation of forest schools emerging in Aotearoa, along with influences from the forest school movement evident in existing New Zealand early childhood services. The article suggests that traditional Indigenous Māori worldviews and knowledges give meaning and contextualised authenticity to ‘forest schools’ approaches in early childhood education in Aotearoa (New Zealand).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Alcock ◽  
Jenny Ritchie

© 2018, Outdoor Education Australia. Early childhood care and education services in Aotearoa New Zealand drew initially on the Fröbelian model of the kindergarten or ‘children’s garden’. Later models such as the Kōhanga Reo movement, the highly respected curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa, and the Enviroschools programme are grounded in te ao Māori, Māori worldviews, that feature a strong connectedness to place, and a deep sense of a spiritual inter-relationship with the land, mountains, rivers, and oceans. This article considers how the imported Scandinavian/European/UK models of ‘forest schools’ might fit within this context. To illustrate early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa (New Zealand) we draw upon research conducted in early childhood settings in this country that illuminates children’s experience in the outdoors. We draw upon critical early childhood scholarship to theorise this situation of forest schools emerging in Aotearoa, along with influences from the forest school movement evident in existing New Zealand early childhood services. The article suggests that traditional Indigenous Māori worldviews and knowledges give meaning and contextualised authenticity to ‘forest schools’ approaches in early childhood education in Aotearoa (New Zealand).


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Irwin ◽  
Jo Straker

AbstractThe relationship between outdoor education and environmental education in Aotearoa New Zealand has undergone many changes since formal education began in early colonial times. Discussion draws from qualitative doctoral research undertaken by the authors that investigated education for sustainability in outdoor education and how meaning is ascribed to outdoor experiences. The article describes how environmental education and outdoor education had common historical roots in nature studies that eventually were teased apart by the development of separate agendas for learning and assessment, coupled with the political context of the 1970s and 1980s. The article finds that contemporary forces relating to the economy, society and the environment are now driving a re-engagement of the two discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand at a variety of levels, from schools to national bodies, and that this re-engagement signals a positive outcome for addressing key environmental issues and engaging students in the outdoors.


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