Abstract
The outdoors has layers of meaning which potentially influence our connection with the wider world. In outdoor education, these different meanings have lacked in-depth critique, yet they shape outdoor education practices. The lack of attention given to the complexity and ambiguity of “the outdoors” has allowed adventure and pursuit skills to dominate many programmes without full consideration being given to how those meanings influence their practices. In exploring how meanings of the outdoors shape practice, outdoor educators from various backgrounds shared stories about their personal and professional experiences. This chapter focuses on the stories of three female outdoor educators and highlights how emotional responses, vulnerability, embodied knowing, and relationships are attributes to be celebrated when working outdoors.
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Notes
- 1.
The use of italics for the outdoors has been used to highlight the difficulty of talking about a dominant construction when there are many localized meanings of outdoors. Having addressed the issue, this convention will not continue.
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Straker, J. (2018). Women’s Voices in the Outdoors. In: Gray, T., Mitten, D. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Outdoor Learning. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53550-0_6
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