As Australia heads into a new era of implementing a National Curriculum, the place of Outdoor Education in Australian schools is under question. In the initial drafts of the National Curriculum, Outdoor Education has been marginalised. The authors propose that Outdoor Education should maintain a strong role, especially as processes of experiential…

My research, exploring the theories and practices of facilitator educators, led me to ask questions about some potential gaps in outdoor leadership texts published in the last six years. Do the authors and editors of these texts focus on the things that are really important to the effective practice of outdoor leadership? My research with…

This paper investigates the repertoires teachers employ when talking about taking children outside of the classroom and keeping them safe. Research data were a series of individual and focus group interviews with primary school teachers. Three repertoires were identified: "safe practitioner," "adventurous risk-taker" and "fun, pleasure and…

The purpose of this research was to examine the naturalistic decision making processes of leaders of outdoor adventure activities. The research focus was on field-based identification of the characteristics of leadership experience, followed by their use under controlled experimental conditions employing computer simulations. The sample consisted…

This paper is part of an on-going project to examine outdoor education related deaths in Australia since 1960. It records 17 incidents not previously recorded in papers in this series (Brookes, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2007), in which 15 participants, two supervisors or teachers, and one member of the public died. Eleven of the incidents occurred since…

This paper examines the viability of using a communitarian framework within outdoor education practice, specifically in order to address the tension between individual rights and social responsibility that is frequently found on overnight (or multi-day) educational expeditions. The setting of educational expeditions offers rich potential for…

This paper recommends a reconceptualisation of "experience learning". It is premised on a belief that the simplistic learning cycle is problematic and moreover is an oversimplified interpretation of Kolb's original model of experiential learning. We argue that to understand experiential learning fully a return to the original theoretical…

A growing body of literature indicates that humans need contact with nature for their wellbeing, however at the same time young children are becoming increasingly separated from the natural world as their access to the outdoors diminishes. The importance of school and prior-to-school settings in connecting children with nature has been…