Geography Field Trip Research Articles

Reflections on beliefs and practices from New Zealand outdoor educators: Consistencies and conflicts

********** I have found my pedagogical practice to be influenced by shifts in my beliefs and values during my fourteen years working as an educator, eleven of which have been in secondary schools. Consequently, I have become more interested in the relationship between teachers' beliefs, values and pedagogical practices, especially in relation to outdoor education. This area has received little attention in outdoor education research and literature, and according to Fang (1996), has only emerged in general education literature in the last two decades This article, therefore, examines the complex relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices through reflecting on the thoughts and experiences of a small group of New Zealand outdoor educators. It is based on the findings of a research project carried out in 2007 with four secondary school teachers. These teachers taught in a variety of school contexts, over a range of subjects which all situated learning experiences in a variety of different outdoor environments. The purpose of the project was to examine teacher beliefs about outdoor education and explore the complex relationships between beliefs, values, and self-perceptions of pedagogical practice. Of particular interest was perceived consistency between beliefs and practices and conflicts and tensions which arose when inconsistency was present (see Robertson & Krugley-Smolska, 1997; Taylor & Caldarelli, 2004). The design and analysis of this project was informed by a critical socio-ecological perspective which sought to identify and interrogate teacher beliefs and practices in regard to their relationship with environmental and social or community issues. Drawing from the traditions of critical theory, this perspective engaged with literature from critical pedagogy theorists such as Kellner (2003), Kincheloe (2007), Giroux (2003), and Freire (1972), critical ecological and place-based theorists such as Bowers (2001a) and Gruenewald (2003), and outdoor and environmental education theorists such as Martin (1999) and Payne (2002). Critical pedagogy advocates strongly for addressing issues of social injustice and inequality through education, but according to the critiques of Bowers (2001a) and Gruenewald (2003), this focus had failed to take into account human relationships with the natural world in a broader ecological manner. In a converse way, Martin's (1999) concept of critical outdoor education sought to examine dominant and exploitive human-nature relationships, but as suggested in the critique of Payne (2002), critical outdoor education distanced itself from the traditional critical theory concerns of social justice and equity. Consequently, a holistic perspective was taken in this research, informed by the projects of both social and ecological justice, which was concerned with the development of appropriate relationships with human and non-human nature. This position sought to gain understanding of the complex relationships between teacher beliefs and practices with specific regard to the environment and community. It consequently influenced the choice of questions put to participants as outlined in the method of inquiry section of this paper. At this point it is important to clarify constructs of the term outdoor education, as used in this paper. It has been suggested by New Zealand outdoor education academics such as Boyes (2000) and Brown (2006) that there remains semantic confusion over the terms associated with outdoor or adventure education in the New Zealand context. This paper recognises outdoor education as an interdisciplinary field in which meaning is socially constructed. It therefore adopts a broad view of outdoor education, similar to that of Smith, Carlson, Donaldson and Masters (1972) who suggest, "outdoor education means learning in and for the outdoors. It is a means of curriculum extension and enrichment through outdoor experiences" (p. 9). This includes traditional notions of pursuit-based outdoor adventure education but does not exclude outdoor learning experiences such as those undertaken in geography field trips. …

Lost in the field: ensuring student learning in the ‘threatened’ geography fieldtrip

As a result of its importance to the discipline's identity and epistemology, the nature of fieldwork and the fieldtrip itself have recently come under close scrutiny in the education and geographical literature. Moreover, not only is their pedagogical importance being debated, but also their future viability at a time of increasing pressure on institutions to minimise potential risk situations in the field, offer value for money to students as well as following the increasingly common and popular trend of long‐haul fieldtrips. This paper therefore critically interrogates the role and use of fieldwork within geographical teaching and learning in the light of its changing and increasingly contested status within the discipline in three parts. First, it outlines and reflects upon the current debate surrounding the threat to the primacy of fieldtrips in geography at a time of ongoing upheaval in higher education. Second, through the empirical example of personal experiences teaching on second‐year undergraduate urban geography fieldtrips to San Francisco in December 2007 and 2008, the paper engages with the current discussions of the pedagogical importance of fieldtrips. Third, the paper asks, to what extent teaching in ‘the field’ might foster the ‘experiential’ or ‘active’ learning needed to inspire the kind of ‘deep learning’ approaches that hold the kind of ‘transformative’ potential envisaged as a key goal of education more broadly. Through exploring these ideas with reference to recent and relevant experience, the paper aims to critically interrogate the role and value of fieldtrips at a time when their potential demise is being cast as a fundamental assault on geography's founding identity and pedagogical traditions. The paper concludes that despite the threats it faces, the pedagogical significance of fieldwork means that it must remain a fundamental tenet of the geographical educational experience.

The place of fieldtrips in New Zealand university geography

Abstract: This paper considers three questions: Why are fieldtrips used in geography? How does this mesh with the geographers’ own understandings of geography? What do lecturers hope to achieve on fieldtrips? Understandings are gleaned from interviews with those who run fieldtrips. There has been a tradition of fieldtrips in New Zealand and this very tradition helps to maintain them. Fieldtrips are shaped by geographers’ particular philosophical approaches to geography and take different approaches according to their aims.

What is the value of fieldwork? Answers from New Zealand using two contrasting undergraduate physical geography field trips

Abstract: This paper addresses the value of fieldwork compared with desk‐based teaching using student questionnaire and focus group approaches applied to two contrasting field trips in the Geography programme at Massey University. Student views on the relative value of an 8‐day residential alpine physical geography field trip to Fox Glacier and a day's ‘tour’ of Manawatu fluvial and coastal landforms indicated in both instances that the fieldwork was highly valued. The value of fieldwork lies particularly in providing students with a better sense of real‐world environments and processes, an enhanced understanding of their subject and affords opportunities for social interaction that cannot be duplicated in class.

A walk on the South West Coast Path: a view from the Other side

Walking has long been recognized as the main form of countryside recreation in the UK (Patmore 1972) and its popularity has been greatly encouraged by the network of long-distance footpaths that now criss-cross the country, not to mention the evergrowing right to roam anywhere across open country as the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000) is steadily implemented. I, therefore, was particularly interested in the paper by John Wylie (2005) interpreting his reactions to a day spent walking along the South West Coast Path between Clovelly and Hartland Quay on the North Devon coast. I should say that I have known and walked the coastal footpath between Minehead and Padstow for many years, though I have never attempted to cover it in a single hike as he did. Like the author, however, I have done the walk from Clovelly to Hartland Quay in a day. Indeed, I have done it on several occasions over the years; in a variety of weathers, alone, with family and friends, and with students on a Geography field trip. No two of these walks have ever been the same and I found the analysis in the paper of what shapes our reactions to landscape quite fascinating for the way in which it illuminated the subtleties behind our individual perceptions. Who we are, and where we come from, are self-evidently key determinants of what we perceive and how we react to any situation and the analysis is a powerful antidote to the didactic world of the guidebook, with its aim of imposing a pre-set structure on what we see, smell and hear. Nevertheless, reading the paper left me with a distinct feeling that the picture was incomplete and I have come to the conclusion that this stems from the narrowness of the context within which the walk appears to have been undertaken and analysed. The whole focus seems to be overly self-centred and introspective and, thus, omits some crucial elements of what it is that influences the appreciation of such a walk. That is not to say that the whole experience is not deeply felt and forcefully communicated. There are passages in the paper of quite lyrical writing, my favourite being the description of emerging from the dense woods west of Clovelly into the open farmland and cliff tops near Brownsham:

The Problems of Utilizing ‘Direct Experience’ in Geography Education

Many fieldtrips are designed so that students might have direct experience of ‘the landscape’ and/or ‘the people’. But as Scott (1992) warns, experience of ‘the real world’ is never transparent and unmediated. It is with this central idea in mind that the author (re)examines the epistemology of two human geography fieldtrips that concerned recent migrants to New Zealand in order to show how they trade on a logocentric essentializing epistemology. Scott's (1992) critique of experience forms the central theoretical framework of the article. The author draws on this framework to review the geographic education literature concerning the role of experience; to describe the pedagogical intentions of the lecturers running the two human geography fieldtrips; to analyse data from interviews with students conducted some months after the fieldtrips had taken place; and to claim that a logocentric essentializing epistemology is evident in the design and effects of the fieldtrips and that this is flawed theoretically, practically and ethically.

Risk assessment and geography teachers: a survey

Recently the issue of health and safety procedures on field trips and school visits has come to the fore, as a result of a series of tragedies involving the deaths of pupils. A review of some of the recent court cases and inquests involving the victims of field trips was undertaken. This indicated that schools and teachers are failing to implement risk assessment procedures which are a requirement of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. The research focuses on the perceptions and practices of geography teachers as leaders of field trips. A central question is whether or not geography field trips are operating to acceptable safety standards. A questionnaire was constructed which set out to explore a sample of Northern Ireland geography teachers' attitudes to issues of liability and risk assessment. The findings indicate that teachers' compliance with Regulation 3, the requirement to conduct adequate risk assessments is variable, and a small proportion never undertake any risk asses...

What Has the Geography of Sleeping Arrangements Got to Do with the Geography of Our Teaching Spaces?

As geographers we are used to researching and teaching about those other than ourselves and it is timely to turn our gaze on the social and spatial practices of our own teaching spaces. One particular teaching space is the overnight geography field trip, a context in which geography fieldwork is ostensibly the main focus for two or more consecutive days. Teaching spaces such as classrooms and field trips, like all social spaces, are imbued with spoken and unspoken assumptions about sexuality, gender and 'race'. Geography field trips are one site in which to examine how social space is constituted via spoken and unspoken assumptions and how these assumptions shape field trip participants' understandings of themselves within these spaces. Simultaneously, field trips offer a site for the consideration of the socio-spatial relations of the reproduction of contemporary geographic knowledge. This article is one response to what Jon Binnie identified as an urgent need for geographers to understand how geography is being taught. Although sleeping arrangements are 'not formally notified' as part of fieldwork activity, the author demonstrates how sleeping arrangements conveyed important messages about sexuality, gender and cultural practices during seven overnight field trips held by two universities and two high schools in New Zealand. The concern is how apparently mundane arrangements such as the organisation of sleeping might reveal the ongoing hegemonic social and spatial relations of teaching and learning geography, as these are shaped by sexuality, gender and 'race', so that we might be better informed to challenge and change these practices.

Embodied Fieldwork

The residential geography field-trip is a key context in which geography students learn how to act and think like geography students/geographers. This learning to act like and think like a geography student/geographer is what I refer to as embodied fieldwork. In this article, I examine one particular aspect of embodied field-work: the walking and climbing necessary on two physical geography field-trips. The assumption that all geography students (and staff) are able-bodied is one of the many messages conveyed by the selection of rugged outdoor environments for fieldwork. This able-bodied discourse is examined via the axes of physical ability, gender, and age.

Freedom to Learn: A Study of the Experiences of Secondary School Teachers and Students in a Geography Field Trip

This study is a qualitative case study of a geography field trip of Secondary Four (Year 10) students in a Hong Kong school. It conceives fieldwork as an experiential activity in which an understanding of the experiences of teachers and students in their contexts is important. The results revealed that the students' intent before the trip and their learning experiences after the trip were much richer than their teachers had intended. Despite some students' negative experiences of previous field trips, there was a universally strong desire to escape from their perceived boredom and constraints of the classroom. Field trips were cherished for their rarity and freedom, and the field sites were sought for their novelty. The study has revealed the relative freedom of the field as a learning environment in which the students were more proactive and teacher-student rapport improved. Besides deepening their understanding of what they had previously learned in class, some students were able to see things in new perspective. For many of them, there was a desire to be free from the presence of the teachers and to have greater control over their learning. The findings also indicated that upon return to school, there was a quick return to the status quo. The inspiration which resulted from freedom of learning from the field trip was often not transferred to the classroom setting.

An Extended Geography Field Trip

An Extended Geography Field Trip

Geography Field Trips Via Colored Slides

Geography Field Trips Via Colored Slides

Junior High Field Trips in Geography

Junior High Field Trips in Geography

Construction Activity Follows First Grade Geography Field Trip

Construction Activity Follows First Grade Geography Field Trip

Field Trips in Upper-Grade Geography

Field Trips in Upper-Grade Geography

Field Trips in Geography

Field Trips in Geography

Pupils' Views on Field Trips in Geography

Pupils' Views on Field Trips in Geography