title: Outdoor Learning: A Theory of Community-Based Pro-Environmental Learning Through Leisure
Creators: name: Polistina, Kim Joanne
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Outdoor learning
subject: outdoor leisure communities
subject: Queensland
subject: Indigenous communities
subject: community based environmental education

description: The purpose of this thesis was to develop a theory of outdoor learning grounded in the everyday lives of community-based groups and individuals in Australian Western society. The groups involved in this research where from appreciative outdoor leisure and Indigenous communities in Queensland, Australia. These community-based groups engaged with environmental learning and education through non-formal or informal means of sharing pro-environmental knowledge and values. The theory discussed in this thesis was grounded in the outdoor lifestyles of the people involved in this research and examined the epistemological underpinnings of these lifestyles. The outdoor learning that the people in this research implemented on an ongoing basis expanded their own pro-environmental knowledge and values and also assisted others in society to increase their pro-environmental knowledge and values. This research identified that the outdoor learning practices of those in this research were linked intricately to their outdoor leisure and related everyday activities. A model of the symbiotic relationship between outdoor lifestyle contexts, outdoor leisure settings and outdoor learning practices has been developed. The participatory nature of the research and the development of the theoretical framework of outdoor learning required grounded theory methodology supported by a sub-action research process. This dual methodology process combined with the social action or change aim of the research and the need for critical reflection on the neoliberalist social system currently dominant in Australia firmly established the research within the critical theorist (structural) and social action/interpretivist paradigms. The compatibility of the dual methodology enhanced the ability of the research to provide the best possible avenue for voicing the worldviews of appreciative outdoor recreationists and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples involved in this research. Twenty-nine non-Indigenous appreciative outdoor recreationists and nineteen Indigenous people were involved in this research. People discussed their lives, the environmental worldviews that underpinned them and their outdoor learning practices. Information was also gathered on the constraints imposed by the neoliberalist ideals of the Australian social system on the outdoor learning practices of the people in this research. This thesis also addressed gaps in the literature on the characteristics of community-based environmental education. In this literature people within the community are represented as those to be educated by formal education advocates rather than those who were able to be educators in their own right. The theory developed in this thesis rejected this 'learner' or 'student' label and explained how the people in this research implemented their own educator role through their outdoor learning practices that were manifested in their outdoor lifestyles and their appreciative outdoor leisure settings. The theoretical framework developed in this thesis explained the implementation of non-formal and informal outdoor learning practices that supported a two-way dialogue of pro-environmental knowledge and values being shared between people with pro-environmental knowledge and values and others with a growing interest. The social context for this two-way dialogue was found in the outdoor network groups with whom the people in this research interacted. These appreciative outdoor leisure and social networks provided strength for the maintenance of subcultures and cultures, working within the dominant Australian Western culture, to increase the environmental literacy of the wider social group. The strength of commitment to their outdoor learning practices was highlighted in the resilience and loyalty to the continuation of these practices despite strong constraints imposed by the maintenance of neo-liberalist ideologies in Australian society. This research indicated a number of Australians implement pro-environmental values, through their outdoor lifestyles, rather than supporting the economic rationalist values of materialism. This thesis has theorised the community-based outdoor learning practices adopted by particular appreciative outdoor recreationists and Indigenous Australians living in Queensland. Their voices contribute to the broader outdoor and environmental education discourse. This thesis has also validated appreciative outdoor leisure as a prominent setting for outdoor learning of pro-environmental knowledge and values and highlighted the valuable contribution leisure could make to the environmental education agenda in Australian society.