Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
Philosophical Perspectives in Outdoor Education, Moray House School of Education,
University of Edinburgh, May 2nd-4th, 2012
Malcolm Thorburn and Aaron Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in
school-based curriculum
Introduction
We write as teacher educators who consider it beneficial, conceptually and methodologically, to
extend thinking on how school-based outdoor experiences can enhance student learning. Our
holistic view of learning is one which encourages teachers and outdoor educators to cultivate
practical methods that can fulfill the requirements of model-based curriculum e.g. Curriculum for
Excellence (CfE) in Scotland. This view sits squarely within the acknowledged practice of
experiential education and follows in the academic heritage of those such as John Dewey, Kurt
Hahn, and Paulo Friere. Central to this perspective is an emphasis on personal and social
education (PSE). Experiential educators have some unease about the restrictive nature of content
driven curriculum taught in traditional classrooms (Dewey, 1938). In recent decades these
conversations have sought alternative arrangements, where emphasizing how the development of
cognitive skills and affective qualities might better be taught in more experiential learning
environments. Increasingly, discussions on associated skills and qualities are being understood as
practical wisdom in a Neo-Aristotelian sense. With this in mind our aims are to draw together the
work of Dewey and Aristotle with a view to bringing clarity to the intellectual and affective
qualities that comprise our understanding of PSE or growth in practical wisdom. For both Dewey
and Aristotle, the goal of enhancing practical wisdom in learners through experience is
ultimately the cultivation of good citizens. As such, the focus of the paper is on how learning
experiences which are broadly identified as contributing to wellbeing and effective citizenship
can be valued as well as articulated and measured.
In taking our research forward, the work of Tiberius (2008; 2012) is of particular interest as it
draws upon both moral philosophy and positive psychology evidence in analyzing how to make
good choices in order to live well and wisely. Pivotal to this endeavor is adopting a first person
process-based perspective on learning that links with normative decision-making which is
informed by experience on how best to lead our lives. Underpinning Tiberius’s critique are the
skeptical and empirical influences of Hume. Thus, central to Tiberius's self-directed account of
living a life which you value is that there is coherence between our reflection and our life
satisfaction values, in ways which ‘can bear our reflective scrutiny’ (Tiberius, 2008, p. 12). The
notion of wellbeing developed is one which Tiberius takes to include more than happiness or the
hedonic pursuit of pleasure, and is based on human flourishing. This includes objective and
subjective influences as there is both an objective societal concern with positive psychological
functioning and relations with others and a subjective component which recognises what
individuals want e.g. of being absorbed in experiences which engage fully with one’s skills and
capacities.
To outline how these key conceptual considerations can have methodological relevance, we use
CfE as the context for elaboration. CfE outlines a policy vision of a more integrated and holistic
form of education where teachers are encouraged to make full use of their enhanced professional
autonomy and decision-making responsibilities (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2008).
Specific CfE through Outdoor Learning (CfEtOL) guidelines provide a rationale and support
1
Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
advice for increasing schools involvement in outdoor learning (Learning and Teaching Scotland,
2010). CfEtOL advice outlines that teachers should plan integrated learning experiences which
offer students the chance to ‘deepen and contextualise their understanding within curriculum
areas, and for linking learning across the curriculum in different contexts’ (Learning and
Teaching Scotland, 2010, p. 9). This could be achieved, for example, through making
connections between the environmental, the personal and social with new CfE literacy, numeracy
and health and wellbeing agendas for which all teachers have a generic responsibility. Thus, as
knowledge becomes more complex e.g. in terms of sustaining economic growth as global
citizens, greater levels of outdoor learning can become a productive space and context for
reviewing and adapting approaches to learning.
In summary, CfEtOL conveys an approach to learning which is consistent with developing an
integrated curriculum and helping teachers to see connections between what otherwise have
often been treated as discreet subjects. At face value, the prospects for learning outdoors have
rarely been better in Scotland. However, a recent report of career long teacher education makes
no mention whatsoever of outdoor learning, as might have been expected, for example, when
identifying the core themes of professional development (Scottish Government, 2011).
Therefore, quite how plausible theory might connect with higher levels of school
experimentation has yet to adequately be teased out. We begin by reviewing the conceptual
connections between experiential education, PSE and practical wisdom. Thereafter, we focus
specifically on how PSE informed values in outdoor learning could aid the development of
wellbeing as a central educational goal.
Values and practical wisdom
Experiences offer particular, situated opportunities to practice good deliberation and virtue. In
Aristotle’s view practical wisdom is the intellectual virtue uniquely responsible for guiding a
person’s ability to be virtuous in particular circumstances. Thoughtful attention to experience
and the practice of deliberation tends to lead to good decisions and living well. However,
Aristotle (1985) notes that young people are mostly poor learners when it comes to practical
wisdom as they lack the experience required to deliberate well. As such, experiential education
literature challenges students to practice reflecting and deliberating in order to develop the
cognitive skills and affective qualities necessary for practical wisdom (Brinkmann, 2007).
Consequently, as learners begin to critically engage with experiences, recognize available
choices, and discern the ‘best’ way forward, their processes of critical reflection, practical
reasoning, evaluation and judgement improve. Both experiential education literature and
Aristotle, argue that PSE grows when learners have opportunities to practice making reflective,
discerning and often value laden choices (Carr, 2006). For Aristotle (1999), human flourishing
requires the cultivation of practical wisdom can help foster good citizenship and build thriving
communities. Theoretically, numerous parallels exist between Aristotle’s situated and holistic
approach to the development of practical wisdom and more experiential pedagogical approaches.
Within experiential education literature, the most significant theme demarcating experiential
approaches from traditional ones is an underlying desire to cultivate personal and social growth
in participants; to achieve PSE through meaningful, guided experiences. The emphasis on active
and engaged learners encourages curriculum which highlight meaningful choice i.e. deliberation,
discussion, decision, action, and reflection (Brinkmann, 2007). Aristotle (1985) identifies such
practices as preconditions for practical wisdom and virtuous living.
2
Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
As such identifying PSE as a central aim of experiential education captures the value of
experience in both a Deweyian and neo-Aristotelian sense. From a Deweyian perspective,
experiential learning depends on developing experiences that intersect with the learner’s internal
conditions - those mental maps of the world that students bring to the experience. Properly
developed experiences will entice and perplex learners because of their relevance to these
internal conditions (Bassey, 2010; Dewey, 1938). Invariably the learner’s internal conditions are
a complex and tangled web of intellectual, emotional, ethical, and spiritual representations
(Allison & Von Wald, 2011). Thus, meaningful learning experiences engage learners holistically
and require cognitive resources to help learners construct coherent meanings and reflect
critically. Essentially, the learner is invited into a practice that develops practical wisdom.
Personal and social education, health and wellbeing and outdoor learning
In this paper, we use the term PSE in line with the ways it has been interpreted in curriculum
arrangements in Scotland where since 2010, PSE sits (along with physical education and home
economics) in the curriculum area of ‘health and wellbeing’; an area for which all teachers have
a general responsibility as well in some contexts a subject specific responsibility. Of the six
outcome areas in health and wellbeing, two ‘mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing’
and ‘planning for choices and changes’ are of particularly holistic interest. On this basis, our
focus is predominantly on the integrated challenges of wellbeing and on educating students to
make better decision makers. The priority is on how best to design teaching and learning
episodes which invite students to review their decision making on planning and lifestyle choices.
For example, if curriculum time is dedicated to blending environmental and practical activity
learning through encouraging students to recognise the sensitivity of habitats and conservation
issues as they journey by kayak on local rivers, then there is also a need to recognise the
normative ethos attached to such decision-making. The difficulty is handling the position where
teachers naturally wish their students to make their own decisions but also wish them to make
decisions within a certain framework of stable values. For example, in extending the current
exemplar, what happens if students’ decision-making fails to recognise the importance of riverbased conservation issues? Therefore, how to balance a focus on individual (subjective and
intrinsic) wellbeing as well as instrumental concerns e.g. objective measurements of knowledge
and achievement is a key concern, especially with regard to where paradigmatically to draw the
line between the two. Tiberius (2012) advocates that ‘right in the middle’ would be the best place
to develop a value fulfilment theory. We elaborate on the possibilities of such an enterprise later,
however, for the present, the focus is on teasing out the respective arguments which inform
subjective (intrinsic) theories of wellbeing with those from a more idealized (instrumental)
perspective.
The main challenge for subjective theories of wellbeing is on how beliefs and enjoyment can
provide an account of values and worthwhileness, other than that associated with satisfying
individual needs and preferences. Put simply, hedonism, by itself, fails to recognize how
conditions in the world influence welfare (Raibley, 2010). Dewey (1929) highlighted as much
many years ago, when noting that it needs to be possible to distinguish between the simpler
subject states of enjoyment and desire with reflections which can generate stable, caring and
evaluative judgements. In Sumner’s (1996) view welfare is subject-relative. His liberal-informed
subjective theory specifies how informed autonomy provides the authentic endorsement
necessary for connecting with life satisfaction theories. Likewise, Tiberius (2008) considers that
3
Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
when reflection is added to subjective informed accounts of wellbeing, authenticity can be
achieved. Her writing draws upon both moral philosophy (a mix of Aristotelian, Humean and
phenomenological insights) and recent positive psychology influences, it outlines how a
reflective wisdom framework can inform how to make good choices in order to live wisely.
Pivotal to this endeavour is adopting a first person process-based perspective on learning that
links reflection with later decision-making. As such, reflection provides normativity, and as
values become increasingly stable (as cognition and emotion develop in conjunction with each
other), reason-giving decisions can be progressively endorsed and justified as sympathy and
empathy for others develops. Accordingly, reflective wisdom can help ensure thoughts are
accurate and authentic with unnecessary illusions or excessively severe self‐assessment being
avoided.
By contrast the main challenge of more idealized theories such as rational desire satisfaction
theories is that there might be too big a gap between a person’s internal values and those they
aspire towards or which are set for them as objectives. The dilemma is that if values require a
human evaluation component for explanatory purposes then they cannot be objective in the
desired sense. As Tiberius (2012, p. 2) states ‘simple subjectivism captures internalism but loses
normativity; idealized subjectivism captures normativity, but loses internalism’. Given these
dilemmas, Raibley (2010) proposes that what matters most is individual agency i.e. the ways in
which activities are effectively referenced against a person’s own values. Thus, a person is doing
well and succeeding if they have developed values and can realize these values by maintaining
stable physical and psychological attributes. Progress in these ways would overtake the
limitations of more subjective self-assessed theories where there can be a lack of perspective in
judgements reached. However, it would not necessarily overcome concerns that subjectivist
accounts of values are subject to manipulation and lack the cognitive basis required to make
them factual. Raibley (2010, p. 593) considers that his account of wellbeing offers the prospect
of a subjective theory of wellbeing which is unburdened by self-assessment concerns and a lack
of authenticity. This is due to his emphasis on reviewing non-actual as well as actual situations
with all the benefits this can yield for realizing better one’s own values and moving nearer to a
paradigm where one is flourishing as an agent. Raibley’s (2010) considers that his theorizing
overtakes the limitations of self-assessment theories of the type advocated by Sumner (1996) and
Tiberius and Plakias (2010) where the person is considered the final authority on their wellbeing.
On recognition of these subjective and objective dilemmas, the next task is to more fully review
Tiberius’s (2012) aforementioned ‘right in the middle’ critique. This involves reviewing key
considerations on values claims, capacity for reflection and authenticity as well as reviewing the
adequacy criteria which might inform thinking on normativity. Such a focus might ameliorate
Aristotelian concerns that the cultivation on practical wisdom is something which can only be
measured over a full life and not over a relatively short space of time. Tiberius’s (2012)
theorizing on value fulfilment builds on Sumner (1996) earlier thinking on the normative and
empirical adequacy criteria needed to contribute to a good theory of wellbeing. Tiberius
considers that values should contain reason-giving traits which we should care about. Thus, we
are better off to the extent that we can achieve our appropriate values. The dilemma is how to
balance the subjective with the objective. In order to capture the special relationship between
wellbeing and the wellbeing subject, her theorizing has subjective elements as well as taking into
account the influences evident in a diverse range of psychological studies. This later feature
4
Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
means that normative measure of values connected with pleasure, life satisfaction, relationship
satisfaction, meaningfulness are drawn out as well as connections made with moral theories.
However, normative measures need not be so hyper-idealized that they limit motivational
engagement and are too detached for most individuals to effectively consider. By aiming for a
theory which is right in the middle, Tiberius’s (2012) intention is that her thinking can inform a
regulative framework which can help people to make coherent and effective decisions about their
lives, but which are not so ideal as to be off-putting. As such, the process of idealization should
introduce the notion of conditions of constraint in defining what is appropriate. Overall, Tiberius
(2012) considers that for values to be appropriate, coherent and suitably contextualized, values
should be well-informed, emotionally suitable and compatible with our ideals. Therefore, values
will vary in accord with our decision-making following reflection.
In summary, the main features necessary are that reflections on wellbeing strive for a first person
perspective on learning which is informed by increasingly stable values. On this basis, values can
connect feasibly with normative measures such as pleasure, life satisfaction, relationship
satisfaction, meaningfulness, in order that reflections are authentic, relevant and accurate.
Thereafter, reason-giving decision making needs to be measure up against the adequacy criteria
of being autonomous and carefully regulated and not so hyper-idealized that the reflection
process becomes overly daunting. However, there remains the challenge of converting
experiential learning gains into authentic records. In following the ‘right in the middle approach’
Tiberius suggest that multiple outcomes can be assessed holistically (and thereafter separated out
for curriculum outcome measurement purposes if needed). Reflections on experiences which are
generated from the first-person point of view are often ‘phenomenological’ in nature as such
investigations can describe reality fully and replace preconceived ideas with analysis of specific
learning intentions. Such a perspective on learning contains the methodological basis for
integrating experiences (thoughts, perceptions, feelings) with associated subject knowledge
meanings. Supported by suitably framed pedagogical approaches, this could effectively enable
personal experiences to merge with subject knowledge imperatives provided there is recognition
that generating such responses is helpful and necessary. The most immediate challenge is to try
and resolve pragmatic difficulties about how the essence of personal explorations can be
captured, assessed and measured. We see coherent points of articulation between Brinkmann’s
(2007) advocacy of increasing practical reasoning in learning and an assessment approach that
helps students make informed and wise judgements which show evidence of discernment,
deliberation and effective decision-making. If these connections are valid, then outdoor leaning
developments should contain the capacity for cultivating skills and affective states associated
with practical wisdom and which are underpin many of the CfE imperatives in Scotland.
5
Thorburn & Marshall: Valuing outdoor learning and wellbeing in school-based curriculum
References
Allison, P. and Von Wald, K. (2010) Exploring Values in the Wilderness: PSD on Educational
Expeditions. Pastoral Care in Education, 28 (3) 219-232.
Aristotle & Irwin, T. (1985) Nicomachean ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Aristotle & Jowett, B. (1999) Politics. Kitchener: Batoche Books.
Bassey, M. (2010) Educating for the real world: an illustration of John Dewey's principles of
continuity and interaction, Educational Studies, 36 (1) 13-20.
Brinkmann, S. (2007) Practical reason and positioning, Journal of Moral Education, 36 (4) 415432.
Carr, D. (2006) The moral roots of citizenship: reconciling principle and character in citizenship
education. Journal of Moral Education, 35 (4) 443-456.
Dewey, J. (1929) The Quest for Certainity. New York: Menton, Balch & Co.
Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (2008) Curriculum for Excellence: Building the Curriculum 3:
A Framework for Learning and Teaching. Learning and Teaching Scotland: Glasgow.
Learning and Teaching Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence through Outdoor Learning.
Learning and Teaching Scotland: Glasgow.
Raibley, J. (2010) Well-Being and the Priority of Values, Social theory and practice 36 (4) 593620.
Scottish Government (2011) Teaching Scotland’s Future: Report of a review of teacher
education in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
Sumner, L.W. (1996) Welfare, Happiness and Ethics Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Tiberius, V. (2008) The Reflective Life: Living wisely with our limits. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Tiberius, V. (2012) Right in the Middle: Normativity and Idealized Subjective Theories of WellBeing. Working paper. Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Tiberius, V. and Plakias, A. (2010) ‘Well-Being, in Doris, J., & the Moral Psychology Research
Group. (eds.). The Moral Psychology Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
401-431.
6