An Outdoor & Environmental Education Community of Practice: Self stylisation or normalisation?

Abstract

In this article, I draw on a qualitative longitudinal study to explore the influence of a tertiary Outdoor and Environmental Education (OEE) course on the formation of environmental ethics among students. In this task, I bring together Lave & Wenger (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) concept of communities of practice and Michel Foucault’s later work on ethics to underscore some of the difficulties of an OEE community of practice as a space for (environmentally) ethical self-stylisation. Bringing these theoretical ideas together is significant because my analysis suggests that the OEE community of practice (re)produces an environmental ethic based on normalised codes of conduct rather than a self-fashioning of an ethical existence as conceived by Foucault. I demonstrate that membership in overlapping communities of practice is influential in participants’ performance of environmental identities and normalising codes of conduct are particularly significant in the physical education/pre-service education communities of practice of which participants are members.