outdoor education

Sense of Place

This piece will be useful for environmental and outdoor educators who work with participants who live in urban areas. It explores how everyone connects with nature differently and how educators can cultivate a sense of place even in an urban environment. Read here.

Dude Grades: A Look at Sexism in Climbing Grades

A look at how men have dominated the rating system in climbing and how the impacts women or more accurately, people who do not have a “typical” male body (if there even is such a thing). Read here.

NADOHE Standards of Professional Practice for Chief Diversity Officers

The National Association of Diversity Officers in High Education has created this useful guide that covers everything from the need for a Chief Diversity Officer position to the scope of that person’s responsibilities and areas of competency. Though geared toward institutions of higher education, this guide is useful for any organization seeking to hire a Chief Diversity Officer. Read more here.

What’s Wrong with Cultural Appropriation? Here are 9 Answers that Reveal Its Harm.

Published in the wake of the Rachel Dolezal scandal, this piece discusses the difference between cultural appropriation, assimilation, and cultural exchange, and how cultural appropriation can harm nondominant groups. This article is useful for outdoor experiential education organizations that utilize icons, language, or traditions of specific cultures in their programming. It’s also useful for outdoor educators who like to teach using costumes and accents. Read more here.

The Meaning of Wilderness Activity

This activity uses a reading to explore how dominant perceptions of wilderness can lead to exclusion. Though it is structured for facilitation during an outdoor experiential education trip, you can adapt it for use in any context in which your organization is grappling with wilderness and its various constructs.

Adapt versus Include Activity

This activity helps guide you in drawing the line between behavior and needs that your organization and its leaders should honor, and behavior and needs that participants will need to modify to adapt to your organizational culture. The take-home is that inclusion doesn’t mean welcoming everything. There will be pinch points when you will need to decide what to include and when to ask participants/staff to adapt.

Inclusion Tips for Outdoor Program and Field Staff

This document is for outdoor, environmental, or experiential educators and conservation program staff. This every-evolving tips sheet provides strategies for fostering a more inclusive environment for any program participant.

Pedagogy of Place

Authors Brian Wattchow and Mike Brown provide an alternative vision for outdoor education by first calling into question the assumptions that are made in outdoor education and then calling for practices that highlight the intersection of place and culture. They have provided the entire book for free!

Read here.

White privilege and experiential education: A critical reflection

Jeff Rose and Karen Paisley outline how white privilege is embedded in experiential education (and specifically outdoor education) through assumptions about how students should experience experiential education and the environment. In academic terms, Rose and Paisely argue that experiential education is a privileged pedagogy.

Read here.

In Light of Reverence

This film tells three stories about land disputes between indigenous communities and outdoor reactionists and/or mining companies. It highlights how different groups and cultures understand and experience land. The film is available for purchase or available to rent on Netflix. The film also comes with a lesson plan, available here.
Read the summary here.