Going deeper: cultivating a generative approach to personal transformation and systems change in outdoor education

Abstract

This study asks how outdoor education can make a greater contribution to the complex challenges of our times, and support the evolution of more sustainable patterns of human behavior. Outdoor education is an eclectic tradition of philosophies, pedagogies, popular movements and methods that has attempted-since the Industrial Revolution-to address what are argued to be the disruptive socio-cultural and ecological consequences of modernity. The study explores an emerging strand within outdoor education that builds on this legacy by connecting deep personal transformation to systems-level change within a broad sustainable development agenda. A diverse group of leading practitioners within this emerging strand was identified. Data collection involved in-depth interviews with twenty such practitioners, along with a broad inter-disciplinary literature review and participant-observer fieldwork. The process of data gathering and subsequent analysis drew on an interpretive methodology, guided by phenomenological hermeneutics in a Gadamerian tradition. Research findings describe the theoretical foundations, social ecology and methods of an emerging approach which is broadly categorized as generative practice and the following research question was explored: "What does it mean to work generatively?" A theoretical framework for generative practice was built which proposes that such work follows two distinct arcs. The inward arc describes a progressively deeper journey to uncover and encounter the authentic self or what some practitioners call original nature. The outward arc represents a progressively greater capacity to engage ethically and transformatively with the world within which that self is embedded. A key conclusion is that generative practice in outdoor education involves creating and sustaining powerful learning contexts within which to support both arcs. The study also explores the practice wisdom and metaskills of generative outdoor education, finding that practitioner variables are central to the process of facilitating meaningful change. The generative practice model is used to describe key lines of practitioner development and the study explores the wider implications of this approach in the leadership development field. Finally a series of practical recommendations are made to guide the development of generative outdoor education models.