scholarly journals Posthumanist and Postcolonial Possibilities for Outdoor Experiential Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-101
Author(s):  
Kathryn Riley
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Relational Agency ◽  
Land Ethics ◽  
Outdoor Experiential Education ◽  
Autonomous Agency

Background: Teaching and learning in outdoor experiential education is often conducted on lands with troubled histories of settler colonialism. This calls for new and creative forms of socioecological responsibility to attend to human supremacism and exceptionalism that marginalizes, exploits, dominates, and objectifies Other(s) in these Anthropocene times. Purpose: Through posthumanist philosophy (re)conceptualizing Western binary logics, this article explores possibilities for postcolonial land ethics in outdoor experiential education to address past, present, and future socioecological injustices and threats. Methodology/Approach: Adopting new materialist methodologies, this article examines affective materiality emerging from a series of multisensory researcher/teacher enactments, as set within pedagogies attuning-with land with a Grade 4/5 class in Canada. Findings/Conclusions: The affective materiality of sense-making in the researcher/teacher enactments provided opportunities to challenge discursively positioned land ethics, suggesting a transforming-with Other(s) through relationally co-constituted existences. Implications: Understanding that no separate and discrete worldviews exist in which individuals act through autonomous agency, but that worlding emerges through relational agency, teaching, and learning in outdoor experiential education can generate an intrinsic sense of responsibility to attend to more equitable relationships with Other(s) for/with/in these Anthropocene times.

scholarly journals Lessons From Critical Race Theory: Outdoor Experiential Education and Whiteness in Kinesiology

2021 ◽  
pp. 105382592110067
Author(s):  
Viviane Soa Gauthier ◽  
Janelle Joseph ◽  
Caroline Fusco
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Experiential Education ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Outdoor Experiential Education ◽  
Sport And Recreation

Background: Outdoor experiential education (OEE) is often presented as a neutral and equitable curricular practice with positive learning outcomes. However, few studies have examined the experiences of racialized and queer White settler students or the representation of Whiteness in OEE curricular documents. Purpose: This article explores Whiteness, racialization, and Indigenous erasure in OEE as an undergraduate curricular practice at a Kinesiology program in a Canadian university. Methodology/Approach: Using critical race theory, a critical discourse analysis of six types of documents used to advertise and organize the outdoor experiential courses was combined with five semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students. Findings/Conclusions: This study demonstrates that students must negotiate Whiteness and settler colonialism to participate in OEE. Three main findings include the following: (a) The imagined student is wealthy and White, (b) students both assimilate to and resist codes of Whiteness, and (c) curricular documents and practices promote Eurocentricity and erase Indigeneity. Implications: OEE presents an opportunity for students preparing to become workers and educators in sport and recreation to learn about Whiteness, racialization, and Indigeneity. Kinesiology program design can use student narratives to shift from supposedly neutral curricular documents and pedagogies to ones that expose and work toward dismantling Eurocentricity.

Reconsidering the Educational Restructuring Process: An Exercise in Retrospective Sense-Making

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 540-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob L. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Educational Settings ◽  
Educational Restructuring ◽  
Conscious Effort ◽  
Restructuring Process ◽  
Conceptual Work

The restructuring movement in American public education has been underway for several years. No longer is it enough, reformers argue, to improve schools as we know them; the very organizations in which teaching and learning are imbedded must be restructured. Yet like so many words associated with reform, restructuring has come to mean everything and nothing. The full significance of the word is often overlooked, its richness lost, as educators and policymakers alike equate any and all change efforts with restructuring. A cursory review of the literature attests to this ambiguity and to the scarcity of conceptual work on the topic. While works on specific restructuring initiatives are prevalent, few focus on the meaning and organizational implications inherent in restructuring efforts. Motivated by this scarcity of conceptual literature, the purpose of this endeavor is to provide both researchers and practitioners a framework for thinking about the restructuring process in educational settings. While not an attempt to offer a comprehensive explanation, a conscious effort is made to move toward an incipient theory of restructuring using the language and logic of the organizational structure literature.

scholarly journals Embodiment in knots of sense-making between learning physical and virtual configurations

2020 ◽  
pp. 204275302097848
Author(s):  
Maria Antonietta Impedovo ◽  
Martine Gadille
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Virtual Setting ◽  
Student Bodies

The purpose of this study was to explore the implications of students’ and teacher’s creative configuration in the physical and virtual world. This analysis will be performed in a secondary school. Adopting a socio-material perspective, this paper focuses on embodiment configuration features for sense-making via new technology mediation. The context of this study was a secondary school who were adopting an immersive 3 D virtual world in different teaching and learning subjects. Selected episodes from video-recordings of two types of sessions mediated by a virtual world – online and in the classroom – were analysed. The analytical framework of this paper draws on the complex and creative configurations of the body in both the physical and virtual setting. Our results highlight the creative ways in which the arrangement of teacher and student bodies acted as a mediational instrument between real and virtual settings.

Coping with COVID-19: a reflection on learning challenges and coping strategies – the case of an accounting conversion masters degree in New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sureshchandra Ramachandra ◽  
Paul Wells
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Innovative Strategies ◽  
Learning Challenges ◽  
And Coping

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to document both, the challenges faced by a cohort of postgraduate students undertaking capstone research projects in an Accounting Conversion Master Degree Programme (ACMP), and the strategies used by teachers in response to those challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Design/methodology/approach Written communications originating from students were analysed to identify areas of difficulties faced by them. These communications were thematically grouped and reflected upon through the lens of constructivist and behaviourist perspectives of learning. Findings The study found that students were severely challenged in sense-making with conceptual, application and judgement-related issues and understanding of the administrative requirements of the module. Innovative strategies used by teachers to resolve each of these issues were documented. While some strategies can be replicated in future periods, some are not sustainable as they have ramifications on other aspects of teaching and learning. Originality/value There are no known studies in this genre, conducted especially during a pandemic period.

Utilizing Specially Designed, Instructional Evidence-Based Practices and Family Engagement

2022 ◽  
pp. 510-523
Author(s):  
Brandon C. S. Wallace ◽  
Yolanda Abel
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Special Educators ◽  
Family Engagement ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Evidence Based Practices ◽  
History Of Special Education ◽  
History Of

Special education has the enhanced capacity to address digital literacies and storytelling, especially as parents become instrumental in the delivery of education through technology. While increasing digital opportunities for interventions and supports for students with learning exceptionalities must be a focus and consideration to improve students' outcomes, there still must be a certain level of sense-making for parents and legal guardians—particularly to strengthen student outcomes. Special educators are well positioned to help lead the work of transforming the relationships between themselves and parents. This chapter briefly explores the history of special education and race, family engagement, evidence-based practices, and opportunities to ensure that special educators help create conversations that lead to actionable opportunities to enhance and improve parent implemented interventions to incorporate families of color in the implementation of digital literacies and digitized platforms of teaching and learning.

scholarly journals Finding New Ways: Developing a Co-Constructed Approach to Excursions in Higher Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Towers ◽  
Chris Loynes
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Experiential Education ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
Outdoor Experiential Education ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Outdoor Educators

Background: Outdoor Experiential Education (OEE) in the United Kingdom is steeped in tradition. Established practices limit the ability of outdoor professionals to respond to the global challenges of the modern world through locally relevant ways. Internationally, Higher Education (HE) is also currently subject to considerable challenges and its continued relevance can be gauged through its ability to become meaningful in a rapidly changing and pluralistic world. Purpose: We examine the impact of our pedagogical approach to working with international students, developing professional practice informed by one place, set within the context of the needs of the world and framed by the question “what kind of outdoor educator do you want to become?” Methodology/Approach: The authors used Dewey’s concept of occupations as an organizing principle for the curriculum. Four excursions involving 86 students were facilitated and reviewed. Findings/Conclusions: The norms of traditional OEE practices were predominantly overcome and innovative ways of co-creating knowledge emerged. Implications: If outdoor educators develop their own occupation in the context of wider needs, they can become place-responsive as well as continuously open to change.

Social Justice Experiential Education in Rural Fiji

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Laura Yomantas
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Experiential Education ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Teacher Preparation Program ◽  
Preparation Program ◽  
Social Justice Teaching ◽  
The Creation

This chapter examines how an experiential education (EE) program in rural Fiji provided rich experiences for social justice teaching and learning in the context of a teacher preparation program. This chapter discusses the instructor's lived experiences, positionality, and commitment to social justice work that propel a desire to create classrooms that are sites of transformation. The primary aspects of social justice teaching and learning discussed include the creation of spaces for critical consciousness to emerge and an embracement of pedagogies of love in the context of the EE program. This chapter concludes with the instructor's continued commitment embodying a social justice agenda in classroom spaces and beyond through a lifetime commitment to this work through hopeful, patiently impatient praxis.

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