‘Why are we here?’ Taking ‘place’ into account in UK outdoor
environmental education
Sam Harrison
PhD Candidate, Moray House School of Education, The University of
Edinburgh
Abstract:
‘Place’ is an under-researched and poorly documented element of United
Kingdom outdoor environmental education.
In the USA ‘place-based
education’ continues to grow, and Australian outdoor education journals show
considerable attention to ‘place.’ Yet UK outdoor environmental educators
and researchers seem to have neglected this area despite Nicol and Higgins’
call for increased attention to this element of education in the outdoors, (Nicol
& Higgins, 1998). This paper examines the considerable and diverse literature
on ‘place’ from a variety of disciplines, examining the implications both for the
UK and international environmental education literature. My own experiences
as a practitioner searching for ways to bring out the rich nature of the venues I
use anchor more theoretical considerations. Drawing on Action Research, a
tentative ontology and epistemology are put forward which raise a set of
pressing questions.
Welcome to Staoineag
Clouds of midges. Literally millions. They have formed a living ball on my
rucksack strap outside the tent, and the grass around it is brown and moving
with insects. The other instructor and I agree that in our (quite extensive)
experience working in the Scottish hills, this is the worst that we have seen.
That evening, listening to the screams and giggles of the group in their tents,
we stop and I wonder why we are here at Staoineag. Why here, in this place?
The underlying assumption of the week-long programme I had been asked to
co-deliver is that ‘wilderness,’ or at least a remote area of wild land, would
provide the location (and content) for an experience which delves into
questions of personal relationship with nature, and commitment to
environmental activism. There are many points on which to debate this
assumption: the question of ‘wilderness,’ (Nash, 1982; Turner, 1995), the
validity of a ‘significant life experience’ approach (Payne, 1999), or how it
could be said that this week ‘works,’ (Allison & Pomeroy, 2000). However the
question I want to ask is ‘why were we there, in that particular place?’
At Staoineag, this query had its immediate forms – ‘what am I doing here in
this midge-infested moor?’ and ‘how do I / the group cope with this?’
Furthermore, it took the form of more general questions: ‘what have the
Scottish hills got to do with environmental / cultural issues such as climate
change, recycling, sustainable futures?’ Equally there were grounded forms
of this question such as ‘what is there about this particular tree that we might
learn from?’ ‘what is the nature of the relationship between ourselves and this
place?’ and ‘what can being here, at Staoineag Bothy, as opposed to
anywhere else, contribute to the group’s learning?’
That these questions resonate beyond the facilitation of this particular project
can be illustrated by critically examining two responses to these enquiries
about Staoineag, from the perspectives of Deep Ecology and Eco-psychology.
I have recently worked on several projects based on these understandings,
which might indicate a growing awareness of such views in the United
Kingdom. These schools of thought also provided some of the unwritten
basis for the project in question. Simply put, an argument from Deep Ecology
might state that the group are in the process of developing a sense of
ecological self, (Bodian, 1995; Fox, 1995b; Sessions, 1995) which will move
them towards a different, and perhaps more sustainable, way of being. In fact,
as Arne Naess, ‘father’ of Deep Ecology, tells Bodian, the process of
‘identification’ moves from local places towards identifying with the universe,
(ibid, p26-7) thus seeming to become more abstract and less ‘placed.’ Fox
discusses this lack of concreteness, but fails to grasp the epistemic hole in
which this puts Deep Ecology, (Fox, 1995a). While a global sense of ecology
might be congruent with the aims of the project, it doesn’t answer the question
of how the process might happen; why we might be at a bothy in the middle of
the West Highlands of Scotland rather than anywhere else.
If Deep Ecology can’t help us answer the question of ‘place’ educationally,
then perhaps Eco-psychology, being closely related (Bragg, 1996), and
arguably more practical in focus can achieve this. An Eco-psychologist might
argue that the group are forming healthy relationships with the environment
around Staoineag, providing a chance to access deep feelings about
ourselves and this place, and understand its significance in their lives, (there
are many examples of this practice (Birrell, 2001; Horesh, 1998; Rogers,
2000)). And yet, while these authors maintain the Eco-psychological idea of
healthy relationships between people and places (Conn, 1995, p. 163), what
relationship have ‘my’ group really got with this bothy?
The group will be at this place for two days and then, most likely, will never
return. We might compare the relationship with this place to a relationship
with a human. While we all might recollect meeting someone very briefly who
had an impact on us, is this a metaphoric chance that we want to build an
educational project on? Martin and Thomas (2000) suggest that if we use this
metaphor, time and effort need to be spent to develop a sense of
connectedness, and that relationships need to be allowed to progress from
acquaintance to intimacy to result in care for places (Martin & Thomas, 2000).
Furthermore, Martin’s research with some of these approaches, provided
testimony from one student who, being asked to feel ‘at one’ with nature
before getting to know it, compared this to a one-night stand, (Martin, 2004, p.
25).
The questions of time and breadth of relationship with place are not dealt with
in the majority of Eco-psychological literature. This discipline, largely, can be
seen to imply a relationship with ‘natural’ places based on very brief, possibly
intense feelings, without any context or other forms of knowledge.1
Thomashow relates his experience of Eco-psychological approaches to
places which are limited to subjective, or emotional understandings:
…as I observe and participate in a sampling of these gatherings, I
notice the glaring absence of any attention devoted to basic ecology
and natural history. People who are delighted to open their sensory
awareness to a beautiful tree or landscape often have an extremely
limited understanding of the natural history of the site, thus totally
lacking an ecological context for what it is they are looking at. The risk
here is that their impressions of the landscape and ecosystem are
projections and fantasies, filled with whatever idiosyncratic or group
constructed unconscious contents are at their disposal. This may be
great for cultivating the spirit of imagination or opening the gates to
deep personal issues, but it is ultimately anthropocentric, neglecting
the rich natural history tapestry that nourished a deep sense of place,
(Thomashow, 1998, p. 284).
Deep Ecology and Eco-psychology have a lot to offer outdoor environmental
education, but the brief discussion above shows that they have yet to develop
meaningful responses to the question ‘why, or what about, here?’ More
importantly they draw out the discussion of one example (Staoineag bothy), to
imply wider questions. These queries involve epistemology: what ways might
we come to know places – how much time would we spend, and with what
approaches? and ontology: what is the nature of place we are talking about; a
physical location, a set of feelings about somewhere? As should be clear
from the foregoing discussion, these debates are not purely conceptual but
have a strong impact on practice and practitioners.
A diverse literature
These questions aren’t without precedent, considerable time has been spent
theorizing, and increasingly, researching with participants, the role of ‘place’ in
outdoor environmental education. This writing can be largely divided into two
areas: American ‘place-based education,’ (Bishop, 2004; Gruenewald &
Smith, 2008; Knapp, 2005; Smith, 2002; Sobel, 2004; Woodhouse & Knapp,
2001), which is focused on classroom teachers embracing the local
community and environment as part of the learning context. The second area
consists of considerable Australian and Canadian writing on ‘place’ in outdoor
environmental education (Brookes, 1998, 2002a, 2002b; Curthoys, 2007;
Gough, 2008; Henderson, 2001; Preston, 2004; Preston & Griffiths, 2004;
Stewart, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2008). The focus of this writing is on outdoor
educators and the provision of stand-alone environmental education
programmes, thus dealing with the places which are visited as part of these
programmes, but are not necessarily lived in by participants or facilitator.
What is striking about the North American and Australian writing is that largely
they do not refer to each other: could useful insights could be gained from
1
An exception to this is put forward by the Eco-psychological practice of Shapiro, who
suggests long-term restoration projects as a method of promoting personal and
environmental well-being, (Shapiro, 1995).
exchange, and what might such far-off places mean to the UK? This raises a
further question about place: does a place-based practice have to be narrowly
delimited? Can we learn anything from ideas originating in another place?
This debate about the size and interconnection of places will be taken up later
in this paper, however for the moment, what is clear from the above writing is
that, while it often deals in specifics from other places, for example the cultural
history of Borhoneyghurk Common in Australia (Preston, 2004), it could
inspire general principles and the development of specific practices in the UK.
While outdoor environmental educators would be inadvisable to wholesale
import examples of place-based practice (in the same way as the Australian
writers critique uncritical adoption of UK and American practices e.g. (Lugg,
2004)), there is a pronounced lack of contemporary UK contribution to this
exciting and current debate. Ten years ago, with regards to ‘place’ in outdoor
environmental education, Nicols and Higgins stated that “the outdoor literature
in the United Kingdom is conspicuous by the absence of any treatment of this
relationship,” (Nicol & Higgins, 1998, p. 53). Very little has changed since
then; the two UK papers which deal with this (Nicol, 2003b) and (White, 1998)
are very hard to access, and rarely cited.
Some classroom-based approaches in the UK are taking up programmes
which are similar to ‘place-based education,’ and there are a small number of
projects which aren’t school based,2 with more possibly more out there. A
common feature of the arguments used to justify these UK examples is a
focus on the benefits of outdoor education in general (such as health,
personal and social development and attainment), rather than any specific
justification of a place-based approach (see the websites cited above for
examples). Thus they leave the fundamental question of this paper, ‘why
here?’ unanswered. Despite engagement by some schools, the lack of recent
educational literature on ‘place’ shows that outdoor environmental education
providers and researchers have not taken up the challenges of this debate.
Arguments for considering ‘place’ in UK outdoor environmental education and
an ontological and epistemological framework for such an effort are the focus
of the paper.
Given the strong dialogue on place in outdoor environmental education in
North America and Australia, it is surprising that there is little research or
widespread practical engagement in educational projects apparent within the
UK. However, it is not within the scope of this paper to investigate the
reasons behind this apparent neglect. The purpose of this paper is to draw out
the salient elements of the wider non-educational literature on place, relating
2
This includes the authors work (www.openground.eu), Dr. Simon Beames’ development of
and research on Outdoor Journeys (www.outdoorjourneys.org), Linda-Jane Simpson’s work
on drama in teacher education at Moray House, the University of Edinburgh (research
publication forthcoming). Forest Schools (www.foresteducation.org) and ‘grounds for
learning’ (www.gflscotland.org.uk) also bring questions of locality and time spent at one
venue into school based projects. Forestry Commission Scotland have just undertaken a
feasibility study on using the Scandinavian model of ‘forest kindergartens’ in a Scottish
context, this might touch on issues of ‘place.’
this to the UK and beyond. More concretely, I will use this as a method of
critically examining my practice as an outdoor educator.
An ontology and epistemology of place
I am walking with a group of nine and ten year-olds down to Clach Thoull
(Scottish Gaelic: ‘the holed stone’). The tide races through the Lynn of Lorn
between Appin and the isle of Lismore (the ‘big garden’). In smaller caves
along the route, limestone, which gives its fertility to Lismore, forms small
stalagmites. The tide used to race through the arch of Clach Thoull when the
sea level was some 14m higher: now the rock stands way above the tide-line.
One of the boys lives just five minutes walk from here, and he leads us round
the path pointing out some of the things he knows. Other members of the
group ask questions about the things around them, and I bring questions of
my own. This ‘Project about my place’ has fortnightly outings to the areas
around the participants’ homes in North Argyll, Scotland.
The starting point for this project is a sense that local places are important,
worthy of consideration, rich in detail and an integral part of who we are.
These ideas have strong backing in an extensive multi-disciplinary literature
on place, spanning geography (Mackenzie, 2006b; Massey, 2005; Paasi,
2004; Tuan, 1974, 1977), anthropology (Feld & Basso, 1996), environmental
psychology (Hernandez, Hidalgo, Salazar-Laplace, & Hess, 2007; Korpela &
Hartig, 1996; Krupat, 1983; Rogan, O'Connor, & Horwitz, 2005; Sarbin, 1983;
Schroeder, 2007) and philosophical enquiry (Casey, 1993, 1997; Macauley,
2006; Malpas, 1999; Seamon & Mugerauer, 1985; Szerszynski, 2006; Young,
2002).3 Some of this broad and well-developed academic discourse is
brought into North American and Australian discussions of place in education.
However, much of the modern geographical theorizing of place, the thought of
Doreen Massey for example, and the vast body of environmental psychology
research into place-identity and attachment is absent. Reviewing the ways in
which this theory and research can inform the project sketched above, will
reveal both a philosophical underpinning to a UK practice of place and also
some areas in which the current international literature on place in outdoor
environmental education could develop.
In the field of environmental psychology, considerable quantitative research
has been conducted into measuring ‘sense of place,’ ‘place-identity,’ and
‘place attachment.’ This research provides measures of these indicators and
also evidence of ways in which people and places form complex and dynamic
relationships which can prompt ongoing learning and constitute a locus for
responsible action, (Rogan et al., 2005). Measurement of possible increases
in place attachment of my group walking and learning around their homes
every fortnight is not a possibility, due to time and resources. If it were
possible it might perhaps be advantageous, the ‘hard’ evidence could be used
to convince funders or policy makers of the necessity of such a project, or of
objective gains in these categories.
3
Bioregionalism also provides political dimensions to concerns of place, (Jackson, 1994;
Sale, 1985) but are more peripheral to this discussion.
More importantly, the environmental psychology research tackles questions
relating to what a certain level of ‘sense of place’ or ‘place attachment’ might
lead to. Researchers consider questions such as ‘what difference in
approach to place do ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’ have?’ (Hernandez et al.,
2007) and ‘what is the ‘place’ we are talking about?’ (Krupat, 1983). These
have direct correlations to facilitation: ‘in what ways does the fact that I and
most of my participants who were not born and brought up here affect our
learning about this place?’ and ‘by ‘place’ do I mean ‘Western Scotland,’
‘Argyll’ (the county), Appin (the home area of some of the participants) or
Clach Thoull (a physical area of say 50 square metres)? Some environmental
psychologists question the limits of positivistic research, pointing to the ways
in which place is a dynamic interaction between people and locations, thus
requiring phenomenological research approaches (Sarbin, 1983; Schroeder,
2007).4
These questions also form a strong element of geographical writing on ‘place.’
Fiona Mackenzie has spent considerable time recording testimony from
community land buy-outs in Scotland (Mackenzie, 2002, 2004, 2006a, 2006b).
She theorizes place as a process through which communities negotiate their
sense of themselves and the politics of the land. Significantly she highlights
the community practices which break down the ‘native versus incomer’
barriers (a problem which lurks at the edge of any discussion of place – see
for example Schama’s analysis of the use of the German forest in the rise of
Nazism (Schama, 1995)). Also, Mackenzie questions the role of ‘wilderness’
and conservation designations in accurately representing the land and
communities which live there. She describes the ways in which communities
such as North Harris, in the Western Isles, have resisted these ways of seeing
place, asserting the continuing human and cultural presence in these areas,
(Mackenzie, 2006b, p. 591).
Again this speaks to the practical questions of how to run the project I have
described: finding ways in which both ‘incomer’ and ‘native’ can speak for,
and deepen their relationships with, the places where they stay, whilst
acknowledging the different understandings they may bring. These questions
may inspire a renewed focus on the rich cultural as well as environmental
heritage of Scottish land. The book ‘On the other side of sorrow,’ by historian
James Hunter, describes the ways in which highland and environmentalist
conceptions of the Scottish landscape developed and, more recently, have
clashed (Hunter, 1995). Hunter points out the roots of viewpoints on the
Highlands which see a beautiful landscape and yet fail to acknowledge the,
often tragic, human history. This is a viewpoint which is prevalent in outdoor
environmental education in the UK, as White’s research shows (White, 1998).
White contrasted the views of those who lived and worked on the lands with
outdoor educators, calling for them to become much more aware of the
culture in the landscape (White, 1998, p. 2).
4
This implies that a critical educational process could perhaps be a suitable research method
even for an environmental psychologist.
Whilst recognition of the history of a place is important, there is a need also to
bring out the distinctly modern interconnection between different people and
places. We are no longer in a time, if we ever were, where things, people and
ideas stay in one place for a long time. Doreen Massey deeply analyses this,
looking at the ways in which modern places are interconnected and constantly
evolving, or co-evolving (Massey, 2005). This speaks to the need for a
pedagogical approach to place-based learning capable of drawing in
connections from other places,5 and acknowledging the agency of the group
in the ongoing story of the places they are in. In the ‘Project about my place’
we scale up and down between places constantly – in each session we visit a
different home place of a participant, but are still geographically and culturally
within a homogenous larger place (North Argyll); geologically the horizon
extends again.
This consideration has broader consequences – what of getting in a mini-bus
and driving to a venue in the Scottish Highlands from a UK city or other rural
location, (a prevalent practice for outdoor environmental education)? The
idea of being in the same place as home is stretched to breaking point, 6 but
what about the quality of ‘away’ places? This theme is taken up by some of
the philosophical writing on ‘place:’ Young points out the contradiction
between the Heideggerian idea of dwelling in, and authentically speaking for,
our home places (Heidegger, 1971) with wanting to speak for endangered and
threatened places around the globe: places where we are not ‘at home,’
(Young, 2002). Young concludes that to avoid the abstraction of talking about
places far away, we need to experience and creatively ‘open ourselves up’ to
them.
This might imply that it is still worth seeing the typical UK
environmental education venue (a highland glen, loch or hill) as a place in
itself.7 This is a theme also investigated by Szerszynski. He draws on
evidence from Northern England to contrast the ‘aesthetic’ approach to place
of newly settled people in a town to the ‘relationship’ orientation of people who
having been living there all their life (Szerszynski, 2006). Could this contrast
be brought out educationally in the contrast between ‘home’ place and ‘away’
place?
Other philosophical work lends weight to an ontology of place as ‘co-created:’
the environment both shaping and being shaped by human and vice versa
(Kidner, 2001; Lukenchuk, 2006; Malpas, 1999; Merleau-Ponty, 1968).
5
Only a very narrow reading of place-based education would have it solely about that single
place – wider connections and possible transferability have to be important: “if students are
allowed to learn how to care about a place and to care for it, they are more likely to consider
living there and helping to solve its problems. A pride of place will also give them the
necessary skills to live well in any community. Place-based learning, wherever that place is,
teaches a sense of community and gives students a model for living well anywhere,” (Bishop,
2004).
6
Though we might have bio-physical connections to that place through food, waste energy
cycles, how deep and educational are our emotive and lived connections to such a far away
place?
7
US writing on place-based education is orientated around the school and the community, so
it does not broach the questions of ‘away’ and ‘home’ places which are raised in the outdoor
environmental education model. This raises questions of the validity of experiences in natural
environments which might be found relatively far away from home are valuable.
Practice adds complexity to this concept – there is no way in which humans
have shaped the physical structure of Clach Thoull, yet the rock provides
opportunity to look at the way in which people attribute meaning and names to
things, and the ways in which the landscape formed and thus determined
some of the cultural elements of the area (e.g. settlement on fertile raised
beaches caused by sea-level change, or the effects of incipient man-made
changes in sea-level). This ontological position raises a question which
recurs throughout environmental debates – is the environment a human
construct or a scientifically measurable entity, or both? (see for example
(Gruenewald, 2003)).
An ontology of place which meets this concern, describing the dynamic
interrelationship of subject and object, and a middle ground between
positivism and post-modern ontologies, is put forward in Action Research as a
‘participatory world-view:’
A participatory view competes with both the positivism of modern times
and with the deconstructive postmodern alternative... However, we can
also say that it also draws on and integrates both paradigms: it follows
positivism in arguing that there is a ‘real’ reality, a primeval givenness
of being (of which we partake); and draws on the constructionist
perspective in acknowledging that as soon as we attempt to articulate
this we enter a world of human language and cultural expression. Any
account of the given cosmos in the spoken or written word is culturally
framed, yet if we approach our inquiry with appropriate critical skills
and discipline, our account may provide some perspective on what is
universal, and on the knowledge creating process which frames this
account, (Reason & Bradbury, 1999, p. 11).
This ontology allows space for ecological and cultural understandings of
place, bringing together the emotional and scientific as already mentioned in
the above critique of eco-psychology (Thomashow, 1998). The above implies
an epistemology of place which embraces multiple ways of knowing: scientific,
cultural, emotional, but requires a practical engagement over time with a
place.8 Also implied here is a complexity of relationship which involves places
changed by the ongoing lives of people and people changed by the ongoing
lives of places.
Action Research describes an epistemology which attempts to account for
such richness and dynamism. Reason’s ‘extended’ epistemology captures a
variety of different ways of knowing: ‘experiential,’ ‘presentational,’
‘propositional’ and ‘practical,’ (Reason, 1998; Reason & Heron, 2008). This
epistemology allows differentiation between direct personal experience of
things, representations of these experiences, various bodies of theoretical
knowledge we might bring to bare, and practical understanding. These are
not isolated elements: for example, this extended epistemology might account
for direct experience of Clach Thoull (experiential knowing), and a variety of
8
As Dr. Robbie Nicol points out, this question of action ‘for’ place is often thrown into stark
contrast by crisis, such as building projects or windfarm applications (personal
communication).
forms of expression of the arch – drawings, discussions, memories
(presentational knowing).
Different conceptual developments of that
experience are possible: an understanding of glacial and post-glacial sea
levels, or of Gaelic place-names (propositional knowing). It might inspire
action grounded in this understanding: a further interest in geology, taking
someone else to see the rock (practical knowing). Nicol has already applied
this epistemological framework to outdoor environmental education theory
and practice (Nicol, 2003a). However the particular applicability to how we
understand places remained implicit.
Returning to the international literature on place, several things are clear: a
UK practice of place-based outdoor environmental education is implied by a
consideration of the wider literature on place independently of North American
or Australian educational writing. Furthermore, the projects described by
various educators in these places (Bishop, 2004; Brookes, 2002a; Preston,
2004; Smith, 2002; Stewart, 2006b) are supported, often more deeply than
the authors state in own their writing, by the above considerations. To various
degrees, they all fit a similar model consisting of going outdoors into a locality
(often perceived as not especially ‘wild’), spending considerable (in
educational terms) periods of time in places, finding different ways of
understanding and expressing these experiences, accessing local knowledge,
contributing to the community.
All these projects, overtly or by implication, employ an Action Research
methodology (for example Gruenewald states that Action Research is
fundamental to place-based education (Gruenewald, 2003)). We can see
how this element of practice is strongly implied by the underlying
epistemology and ontology of place described here. This is not to argue that
North American and Australian place-based practice is homogenous in any
simplistic way, but that a deeper analysis of the conceptual underpinnings of
this practice reveals similar concerns which could be further developed.
These key considerations are: ‘what and where is the place we are talking
about? ‘how do we learn about this place?’9 The above discussion adds a
depth of critique to current debate: for example - is there more to ‘place’ than
simply the location of experience (as Gruenewald argues (2003)), and is the
word ‘place’ itself placeless, inherently generalised and abstracted from
locations such as Clach Thoull and Appin (Gough, 2008)?
Possible directions for the UK
There is an obvious need for research on these topics. Personal experiences
as a facilitator don’t provide enough evidence to add further to the practical
elements of the debate, and there are some complex theoretical questions
which could be delved into.
Having gained a clearer conceptual
understanding and looked at other well researched (albeit Australian)
examples (e.g. (Preston, 2004; Preston & Griffiths, 2004), there is an outline
9
Some of the literature asks these questions, for example (Stewart, 2003), but often remains
unaware of the level of interaction with these debates in wider disciplines.
of a project which might begin to provide research data relevant to these
discussions:10
 a series of visits to the same place
 a diverse, and increasingly participant directed, experiential approach
to understanding the place – through ecology, cultural history,
geology, geography, place-names, interactions with local community,
work projects
 a variety of ways of recording and linking these experiences to wider
issues – discussions, journaling, artwork, building up a body of work
which is contributed to by participants and community members
 an approach which includes different ways of knowing the place:
emotionally, scientifically, as a visitor, from the testimony of people
who work there etc.
Having referenced place-based outdoor environmental education practice
which seems to have developed congruently to, but sometimes with very little
concern for, the philosophical questions investigated here, the query arises
‘what is the point of all this theory?’ For educators who do research and vice
versa, this prompts further questions: having developed an ontology and
epistemology of place, what kind of research would have an impact on that
theory, rather than just being inspired by it? Would the idea of praxis, as the
critical interaction of theory and practice, (Collins, 2004; Cotton & Griffiths,
2007; Meyers, 2006), be realistic for a practitioner, and contribute to the
above model?
What remains is a challenging and engaging process of placing ourselves as
practitioners in the UK. We might ask how far we travel to our venues – do
we have to go ‘away?’ And wonder how much we know about the venues we
use, whether it is useful, or desirable, to be an ‘expert’ in certain places. We
might look at the rich character of the places we work in and ask how our
groups might have a more significant contribution to them, or what different
cultural ways of knowing landscape we have within the UK. Another
important concern turns around how might we research this: Action Research
methodologies are an obvious candidate, but what other approaches might
work? What sort of evidence might justify a place-based learning project,
would it solely be provided by humans or might the environment provide data
also? What academic writing styles and logic might reflect this knowledge of
place?
Furthermore, I have deliberately not put place-based outdoor learning into a
wider context: the impacts on sustainability education, mental and physical
well-being, personal and social education in the outdoors, community
development and more are beyond the scope of this paper and my research.
However these links present an opportunity to connect with wider currents in
education, raising even more complex questions. For example: ‘what has
‘place’ to do with sustainability?’ ‘how might we know we have had an effect
on personal or ecological sustainability in certain places,’ and ‘do we want to
10
A pilot study, followed by a full project, along these lines is the next stage of my PhD
research
aim at such change?’ Here is a rich vein of research and practice yet to be
tapped within UK outdoor environmental education.
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