A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world

Abstract

The subtitle of this book suggests that Wattchow and Brown are concerned with how outdoor education can respond to the changing world. In this book they explore what a pedagogy of place might offer, both in terms of outdoor education practices, and in terms of giving people some tools and resources to help them to engage with this changing world. While many critical questions have been asked about outdoor education practice, in this book the authors endeavour to build on some of these critiques to explore some different ways to do outdoor education. They have aimed to make this book accessible to a wide audience, including teachers, practitioners, tertiary students and academics. The central theme of the book is what outdoor education might look like and what it might do if place were taken seriously as a pedagogical tool. They open the book with a short explanation of place to set the tone for their explorations. Place is about how people develop and experience a sense of attachment to particular locations and has both imaginative and physical realities. In keeping with their argument that place should be central to our pedagogic practices, the first chapter contains the authors' respective narratives of their attachment to places, what this means for them and some of the things that have moved them both toward a realisation that place is important in outdoor education. This approach also illustrates the importance narrative has in developing understandings and attachment to places and is a tool used in all of the case studies. The next three chapters lay out the theoretical basis for the case studies they introduce later in the book. Chapter two summarises some of the myths, dubious claims, and denial of place in outdoor education theory. Wattchow and Brown explore how romantic notions of nature, adventure and risk, and the ways in which the experiential learning cycle work to "collectively silence or work against a placeresponsive responsive approach" (p. 50) in outdoor education. This chapter is a very useful summary of some of the recent critiques of outdoor education. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chapter three is the most theoretically densechapter in the book and it is here that Wattchow and Brown canvass some of the key ideas around place. One thing that becomes clear through this chapter is that place is a dynamic concept. In making a case for place they posit that modern life, and the mobility that is part of that life, create a sense of place lessness. As they note the question of place has arisen because how we live today is raising serious concerns about the sustainability of places and the "unavoidable reciprocity between people and places" (p. 54), means this has serious implications for us as well as for those places. In this chapter, Wattchow and Brown return in various ways to place being open and constantly changing, rather than being a fixed entity, but at the same time our identities are "bound up with the places we claim as ours" (p. 66). They describe some of the theories they draw on later in the book to understand how relationships with place might evolve. They introduce Edward Relph's concept of the insider or outsider, where the outsider is a person who experiences place as little more than background. The insider, on the other hand, depicts a deeper level of attachment to place that is gained through spending long periods in a specific place. One of the highlights of this book for me is that Wattchow and Brown locate the body as central to learning. As they point out, the body is not only ignored, but often erased in much of the outdoor education literature. There is usually little scope to explore how bodies and movement are integral to understanding and identity in outdoor education. They highlight that the sensing body is an important way into knowing, and living and moving in a place is central to knowing and understanding a place. In chapter four, Wattchow and Brown anchor the theoretical and often abstract discussion in chapter three into outdoor education. …