Search

This study examines the perspectives and experiences of older lifelong participants in outdoor education/recreation. 32 participants, women (11) and men (21), aged 60-84 provided narratives of their lifelong engagements in the outdoors in nature-based activities. They were invited to write freely on their early experiences and their current engagements in the outdoors. The purpose was to explore and understand why and how serious lifelong older participants continued with their outdoor activities. This paper considers participants' current embodied engagements. The evidence suggests that as they age, their bodies become less able to deal with discomfort. Yet, the participants, as a consequence of their lifelong knowledge and experience, manage injuries and ill-health, choosing to adapt in various ways to enable their continued engagement/enjoyment in being active in nature. The study stresses the significance of lifelong engagement in the outdoors and the necessity for opportunities for outdoor nature -based experiences throughout the lifespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the significance of exploring the experiences and perspectives of older people who choose to participate in nature-based physical activities in evocative and imaginative ways. It highlights the need for research in outdoor studies to take seriously the turn to the body and the senses that is occurring in much social science and physical culture research, together with recognising the changing demographics in Western cultures which show a significant increase in the proportion of older people. The body has been separated from mind, emotions and feelings in much research in outdoor studies, and ageing studies and physical activity. For the most part, ageing studies have tended toward physiological perspectives with the dominance of medical research promoting biological empirical approaches to investigations. This paper considers theoretical perspectives which are embodied and emplaced and how such frameworks might contribute to the advancement of research on ageing and the outdoors. Sensory lived experiences are considered.

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of "getting", "knowing" and "doing". A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative 'emotion-transition framework' to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the "feeling" discourse, the "thinking" discourse (epistemological self) and the wider "life-self" (ontological) discourse.

This paper takes critical lenses to interpret what students find enjoyable in their learning in specific "subject" environments within the prevailing socio-economic climate in higher education. It considers student dispositions that emerged from dialogues with two groups of students attending a non-traditional university and taking vocational degrees within England, UK. We argue that although each higher education institute can become its own destiny, it can only do so within the boundaries of state policy and its technologies. Higher education, when affected by cultures of "performativity," is arguably focused less on knowledge for "emancipation" and its own sake and more on the "use value" of its products. This paper argues that what is valued by these particular students in their learning and what gives them positive feelings as they engage with this process of learning is not altogether independent of the current governances shaping higher education. (Contains 4 notes.)

In this paper we look at the ways in which the experience of the natural environment was made available to the pupils and the types of activities provided for specific engagement with the local natural environment. It draws upon research undertaken for the Well-being and Outdoor Pedagogies project and previous PhD research. These projects explored the processes of teaching and learning at one outdoor residential education centre. Data were collected through ethnographic research and included participant observation, interviews with teachers, parents and centre staff, and group interviews with pupils. Previous analyses of this research have highlighted a number of aspects of the experience, such as, for example, whilst the interviewed children reflected positively on the experience, the research highlighted the importance of teachers' interaction with the children in providing for democratic, shared, positive learning. The activities undertaken by the pupils included physical activities focusing upon team work and problem-solving, and activities that focused on exploring nature and the natural environment, which surrounded the residential centre. The dominant philosophy of the residential centre is considered, as are the ways in which nature and the natural environment appear largely taken for granted, but for reasons of safety. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper draws upon research undertaken for the Outdoor Pedagogies project and explores the processes of teaching and learning at one outdoor residential education centre with children and staff from "Oliver" Primary School. Data were collected through ethnographic research and include participant observation, interviews with teachers and centre staff and group interviews with pupils. Whilst the interviewed children reflected positively on the experience, we highlight the importance of the teachers' interaction with the children in providing for democratic, shared positive learning through the presentation of an extreme or "critical" incident. We raise the issue of professional development for school teachers working with primary school children in outdoor, residential situations. (Contains 4 notes.)

This article explores the approaches to risk that some teachers adopt when they are involved in facilitating outdoor activities. The research was carried out at a residential outdoor centre as part of a PhD study and a follow-up pilot project. The participants were primary school pupils, their teachers and the centre staff. For the purpose of this article, the term "teacher" is used to refer to both visiting teachers accompanying the school groups and the centre staff. This research was eclectic. It took an ethnographic approach using participant observation and semi-structured interviews to collect a variety of data. Ethnography was considered as the most appropriate for this research because it puts an emphasis on understanding the perceptions and cultures of the people and organisations studied. The findings of the research have shown that, on occasion, teachers take a controlling approach when facilitating outdoor activities in order to manage the perceived risk of being in the outdoors. This tended to result in the disempowerment of the children and put the teachers in a position of power, which had serious implications for the pupils' learning experience. By giving the children specific instructions, and mainly focusing on maintaining discipline during the activities, teachers do not allow their pupils to workout how to deal with risk. The article argues that this had a negative impact on the educational process by taking away opportunities for learning from the children. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper examines the findings from part of a larger project concerned with well-being and outdoor pedagogies. It considers data collected from interviews with primary teachers of 8- to 9-year-old pupils, who had recently attended a three-day residential at an outdoor education centre and these children's parents. It draws upon aspects of the data, which refer to "health related education", body image and teachers' and parents' perceptions. The data suggests that not only are notions of healthy life-style and healthy eating embedded in the primary school's curriculum and in teachers' professional consciousness, but also parents are imbued with body discourses conveyed through the popular media. For the most part, whilst the teachers express and respond to policy and popular discourses on health and body image largely uncritically, some parents are seen to question dominant understandings of health and body size for their children. (Contains 13 notes.)

This paper presents a philosophy and method for an ongoing investigation into the cause and effect of student emotions in higher education. In particular, it presents the possibilities for exploring students' positive emotions as "jouissance" experiences linked to the transgression of power relations and social structures. The paper takes the form of "evolutionary musings" that guide the reader through a confessional account of the research programme, the epistemological and methodological challenges, the limits of data already produced, and suggestions for a future approach. The musings maintain that descriptions of causal relationships of pedagogic action and the phenomenology of students' feelings of gratification are not enough to plausibly interpret the locatedness and meaning of emotions, and that the emotional nexus is shaped by and continues to inform social relationships. (Contains 5 notes.)

Society today is inundated by a multitude of messages regarding the risks and dangers that affect youngsters, with media constantly talking about "cotton wool" kids (see Furedi, 1997, 2001, 2006) and an "obesity epidemic" (see Wright and Harwood, 2009). A social panic has been created by the media, which ignores the positive outcomes of risk-taking, sensationalises risks, and focuses on the dangers of the world. In popular discourse contradictions are in evidence, on the one hand adults are concerned about the safety of young children; on the other hand many argue that society wraps children in "cotton wool" such that they are denied opportunities to play outdoors for fear of accidents. Research has shown that negotiating risks and relating them to individual capacities is essential for the development of young children and their ability to learn from their mistakes and become aware of their personal health and safety (Fenech, Sumsion, & Goodfellow, 2006). This paper is based on a pilot study that explores young children and their significant others' perceptions and experiences of risk and safety, looking particularly at the ways in which experiences of outdoor learning may affect the well-being of children. Using an ethnographic approach the research examines how parents and teachers define well-being, and how being in the outdoors is seen to affect pupils' well-being. This paper, a work in progress, asks if and how outdoor activities, through outdoor learning, contribute to the physical and emotional well-being of young children, briefly touching on theories of power and control.

Outdoor education has been shaped historically and culturally by many influences. Physically challenging activities out of doors have been appropriated by a number of traditions. These include militaristic, educational and developmental ideologies. Arguably, central to these ideologies are heterosexual, white middle class values. While women have sought to challenge this and feminist and pro-feminist research is evident, very little research has been undertaken into sexuality in relation to teacher or practitioner perspective and experience. Consequently, gay and lesbian voices within outdoor education are all but silenced. This paper explores the perspectives of three lesbian and four gay men who work in the UK outdoor education "industry." In-depth interviews were held with the participants exploring a variety of issues relating to their life histories and their experiences of working in a predominantly heterosexist outdoor education culture. This paper focuses upon the ways in which the participants perceived the need to conceal their lesbian and gay identities and the consequential effects of managing their identities. (Contains 6 notes.)

This paper explores the implications and affects of a level two compulsory module concerned with "gender, difference and leisure" on a predominantly male student group studying for sports-related degrees. Participant observation was undertaken by a male and female lecturer who were delivering the module. A cohort of male football students were interviewed as a group, and individual interviews were undertaken with female students. The opinions and expressions of the students are also located in the significant subculture of the collegiate footballer researched by one of the authors. The paper draws attention to the ways in which young male students negotiate their male identities collectively and the implications this has for theirs and other's learning in HE. The findings show that many of the male football students, in particular, attempted to resist knowledge that challenged dominant male behaviours and threatened the project of patriarchy as a whole, such as the hegemonic patterning of the collegiate football subculture. While this resistance was beset with tensions, evidencing some opposition to gender ideologies at an individual level, at least, social identities constructed around gender and "race", especially, were clearly disruptive in the development of critical awareness to such issues. The data presented here highlight a number of pedagogical problems that arise from these complex sets of interrelated identity issues, not least the need for lecturers to develop greater critical awareness of masculine and racial identities and to reflect upon their methods of delivery of contested knowledge. (Contains 7 notes.)

COVID-19 is the greatest global crisis since WW11, infecting millions of people. Those amongst the worst affected have been in the older age range and largely have underlying health issues. The importance of maintaining wellbeing, being fit and healthy, and resisting neoliberal and normalizing discourses as we age becomes more crucial. This paper considers the entanglement of embodied, emplaced ageing, nature-based recreation and green and blue spaces in exploring the experiences and sensibilities of agers. It argues that interpretative research can provide for a better and more nuanced appreciation of older folks' changing embodied subjectivities and their relations with the outdoors. Autoethnography is examined as an insightful, credible methodology in (re)-presenting being old outdoors and being active outdoors. The perceived vulnerability of 70+ folk is considered in light of government policy discourses emanating as a consequence of the pandemic. The paper folds with realist tales of Lockdown in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of a coeducational outdoor/adventure program for 13- to 15-year olds at Shotmoor, England, where all participated in the same activities. The boys' beliefs about the abilities of girls were altered in a way that would not have occurred in a classroom. (DM)

A conference explored consolidation and professionalization of the Australian outdoor industry. Key issues, five areas of the outdoor industry, and signposts of what constitutes a profession were identified. Tensions between industry needs and the role of higher education, the underrepresentation of Blacks and women, and effects of accreditation on community values were discussed. Parallels to British circumstances are noted. (TD)

This paper examines the lived experience of older women participants in (a) a low-impact exercise to music (ETM) class and (b) a yoga class to uncover what is important for them in taking part in these classes. Researcher S is the instructor of the ETM group and draws upon individual and focus group interviews and participant observation. Researcher B is a member of the yoga class where she interviewed the women and undertook participant observations. Both authors are a similar age to the older women interviewees. Through a phenomenological interpretative approach, the paper examines the women’s perceptions of their exercise class and yoga experiences, highlighting pleasurable experiences and features that contribute to this enjoyment. The paper considers relationships between pleasure, wellbeing, the senses, physical activity, and aging, drawing upon a variety of analyses. It pays attention to the contextual features of the ETM and yoga classes in making available and accessible pleasurable physical activity experiences for the women and draws, in part, on ‘typologies’ of pleasure to frame the debate around older women, physical activity, and senses of pleasure. Our research highlights the considerable wellbeing affects for women when physical activity provision takes account of context (the spatial, cultural, social, and sentient). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]