Editorial Themed Issue: Relationships With Others

Abstract

Welcome to this themed issue of Australian Journal of Outdoor Education. All of articles in this issue examine question of relationships with others. The scope and breadth of articles is indicative of complexity of how relationships with others work, why developing positive relationships with others is important and how outdoor education can contribute to this. Dewey (1938) argued that learning occurs through interaction. Learning, in this sense, is not something that happens in isolation, it is something that happens in relation to individual who has experience, others involved, and environment in which it occurs. According to Dewey conceptualises learning relationships learners have with others is fundamental to process of learning. This runs counter to learning, particularly experiential learning, is construed as individual experience by many contemporary authors. For example Beard and Wilson (2006), point out that learning is personal and filtering of experience is individual process. The picture of learning that Beard and Wilson draw here appears to have little to do with interaction. If learning is such a personal and individual process, interaction may in fact get in way of learning. Fenwick (2001) suggests that a major conception of experiential education presumes an independent learner, cognitively reflecting on concrete experience to construct new understandings, perhaps with assistance of educator, toward some social goal of progress or improvement (p. 7). Here learning is still seen as individual process, but Fenwick suggests there may be a place for interactions with a teacher or instructor to assist with that learning. The shift from learning occurring through interaction to learning being a personal and individual experience has occurred in a broader context where neo-liberal political and economic ideologies have come to fore in many Western countries. The rise of neo-liberalism has seen promotion of logic of market-place in all aspects of our lives. This works on assumption that individuals make rational choices based on their best interest and that this is more 'efficient' at directing social distribution of goods and services than political institution of state (Hales, 2006, p. 55). Numerous writers within field of outdoor education have made links between neo-liberal ideologies and contemporary outdoor education practices. In 1998 Chris Loynes wrote about adventure in a bun. He was commenting on how adventure has come to be seen as a commodity like any other commodity in a capitalist society. He argued that capitalist markets have stripped outdoor education of its transformative potential and it is like any other commodity that can be packaged and replicated in a standardised fashion. Connection and relationships are lost in this process of commodification of outdoor education. Like Loynes, Jay Roberts (2012) also utilises work of Ritzer (1993; 2001) in drawing parallels between contemporary practices of experiential education and processes of McDonalisation that are replicated in so many aspects of our lives. The dimensions of McDonalisations that he particularly focuses on are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Roberts illustrates how these dimensions shape contemporary outdoor education practices, particularly in relation to ropes courses. He argues that in this neo-liberal complex the individual is not located socially, transformatively, or critically ... but rather consumptively as a decontextualized and depoliticised individual consumer (Roberts, 2012, p. 95, original emphasis). Learning in this environment is not only individual process, but individual who learns is disconnected from social world and environment in which they are located. Robert Hales (2006) extended this argument by suggesting that outdoor educators have to think carefully about how they respond to rise of individualism. …