Student: Anna Foster
Graduation date: May 2019
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved:
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Summary
Experiential education is essentially taking a student out of the traditional classroom context and placing them in an area that is relevant to what is being studied. Through experiential education, students apply a more hands on approach to learning (Knapp 2002). Experiential education was developed in the early 1900’s as a form of ecological education, and further developed in 1940 when Lloyd B. Sharp designed leadership programs for outdoor education (Knapp 2002). However, experiential education has evolved greatly since then. Collins et al. describes this type of learning as “education [that] requires students to solve problems that do not have definitive right and wrong answers and that inherently include a degree of novelty, instability, and unpredictability”. The practice of experiential learning is, in essence, learning by doing. By doing, students have the opportunity to solve complex problems by place based analysis.
The outdoors commonly serves as a space for interaction between human and designed ecological spaces, such as nature centers. Environmental education is often used in the context of experiential education, emphasizing the significant amount of experiential education that takes place in outdoor settings. This allows student to learn in various habitats. Natural spaces serve varied purposes and have undefined characteristics. Americans have a tendency to perceive designated protected areas as “natural” or “wild”, but it is not clear how these perceptions were cultivated or what implications these cultivations have (West et al 2006). Some of these habitats have been designated as protected areas. However, this has created more controversy over what areas are under protection and to what degree, as well as questions of how land should be used. When the Forest Service considered further restricting human access to wilderness areas, Theodore Kaczynski, a professor at the University of California stated, “‘In short the so-called ‘wilderness’ preserves will turn into artificially maintained museum pieces…Real wilderness living will be impossible’” (Turner 2002). Kaczynski feels that once outdoor spaces are designated for the use of recreational activities or education, they are no longer “natural spaces”, but spaces constructed by humans. Experiential education often uses these designated protected areas or national parks as learning spaces. This interaction between student and protected area creates a relationship between the student and the outdoors. However, if a habitat is designated as a protected area, then perhaps it isn’t a natural area anymore. This means that the student’s relationship with the outdoors is socially constructed.
One question that arises from outdoor education is accessibility. Socioeconomic and racial factors may be a barrier for participating in outdoor education. In a study done in Oregon by Oregon State Parks management, interviews were conducted with different ethnic and racial visitors to understand interests and barriers of outdoor recreation experiences. Many of the participants expressed a want for education, but a lack of information that was available in different languages. There were also concerns pertaining to transportation to and from outdoor areas. Distance was an important factor in outdoor experiences, and locality was preferred. Changes that were suggested were more information about outdoor opportunities in community meeting places, free entrance, and information in different languages (Burns et al. 2008). These interviews indicate that current outdoor recreation sites in Oregon are not accessible to all socioeconomic and ethnic groups. Beginning in 2000, The U.S. Forest Service began conducting a National Visitor Use Monitoring Survey. In Oregon, people in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area were surveyed. In 2006, 8.3% visiting the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area had an income of less than $25,000. Of the total number of visitors surveyed, 96% were white (USDA 2002). The results from these surveys show that a majority of visitors to the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area are wealthy, white individuals. These two surveys on outdoor recreation areas, which are common places of outdoor education, suggest that indicated natural areas in Oregon are not accessible to all socioeconomic or ethnic groups. This limits the outdoor experiences that individuals in Oregon could be having, as well as limiting access to outdoor education experiences.
Experiential education has been studied mostly in the form of outdoor education, showing many different benefits to participants. One example is a study of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) program. The study concluded that participants most learned hard skills, or technical skills, because of experience and ability to practice in the field. Soft skills were also acquired by experience with interpersonal relations, although there is debate over how exactly soft skills are learned (Paisley et al. 2008). The study suggests that hard and soft skills are learned differently through different experiences, and that there are many different ways of implementing skills throughout the courses. Another study of a NOLS course focused on the ability of students to solve ill structured problems. Ill structured problems are very complex problems that have no clear answer, and require creative thinking and adaptability (Collins et al. 2016). The study did, in fact, show that students who took a NOLS course were better able to solve ill structured problems than students who took a similar leadership course in a traditional classroom setting (Collins et al. 2016). The skills that were acquired, creativity and adaptability, are skills that are applicable to solving current problems. Moreover, skills that are learned in experiential education are ethological mechanisms that change the way a person views and interacts with the world. Therefore, it could be said that experiential is a valuable form of learning, though it is not certain whether experiential education is superior to traditional education.
Experiential education often occurs in designated natural areas, such as National Parks. One example of the complexities of these outdoor spaces is the unacknowledged cattle mounts in Congaree National Park (Lockhart 2006). These cattle mounts are slave-made hills on flood plains created so that in the event of a flood, cattle are able to survive by walking onto the mounts. The cattle mounts have never been declared a historical site, nor have they been displayed to the public as a part of the park’s history, and by doing so they neglect to address the historical significance of the land. (Lockhart 2006). This has implications towards the broader ideas of how the outdoors are seen. Another debate over the use of National Parks as areas of learning has to to with parks’ agendas for conservation versus allowance of heavy tourism. “…short-term economic gain and catering to brief tourist visits have taken precedence over the long-term scenic beauty and wildness of the parks” (Daniels 2009). This diminishing beauty that of the landscape is associated with the lack of strict conservation of land. “Heavy visitor volumes threaten the efforts of park managers to plan for a balance of resource conservation, visitor facilities, and the quality of visitor experiences in both the short-term and the long-term” (Daniels 2009). This leads to the dispute on whether National Parks, or any other state or federally owned lands should allow tourism for the benefit of education of the outdoors, or increase restrictions to protect land from overuse due to tourism.
Resources:
Burns, Robert C., Elizabeth Covelli, and Alan; Graefe. 2008. “Outdoor Recreation and Nontraditional Users: Results of Focus Group Interviews with Racial and Ethnic Minorities.” In , 123–37.
Collins, Rachel H., Jim Sibthorp, and John Gookin. 2016. “Developing Ill-Structured Problem-Solving Skills Through Wilderness Education.” Journal of Experiential Education 39 (2): 179–95. doi:10.1177/1053825916639611.
Daniels, Thomas L. 2009. “National Parks: Where the Timeless Landscape Meets the Tourism Time Clock.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 26 (2): 111–23.
Knapp, Clifford E. 2002. “Outdoor and Environmental Education.” In Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed., edited by James W. Guthrie, 1831-1835. Vol. 5. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Gale Virtual Reference Library (accessed October 17, 2016).
Lockhart, Matthew A. 2006. “‘The Trouble with Wilderness’ Education in the National Park Service: The Case of the Lost Cattle Mounts of Congaree.” The Public Historian 28 (2): 11–30. doi:10.1525/tph.2006.28.2.11.
Paisley, Karen, Nathan Furman, Jim Sibthorp, and John Gookin. 2008. “Student Learning in Outdoor Education: A Case Study from the National Outdoor Leadership School.” Journal of Experiential Education 30 (3): 201–22.
Turner, James Morton. 2002. “From Woodcraft to ‘Leave No Trace’: Wilderness, Consumerism, and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America.” Environmental History 7 (3): 462–84. doi:10.2307/3985918.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service [USDA FS]. 2002. National forest visitor use monitoring national and regional project results.
West, Paige, James Igoe, and Dan Brockington. 2006. “Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (1): 251–77. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123308.
Questions
- Descriptive: What is experiential education, and what are the goals of experiential education? How does the government define the outdoors, and is this different from the public’s definition of the outdoors?
- Explanatory: Why do educators choose to teach students through experiential education? How does experiential education effect traditional public education?
- Evaluative: Why do some educators view teaching outside to be more conducive to learning than a traditional classroom setting? How is experiential education limiting by socioeconomic status?
- Instrumental: Should experiential education be reformed in order to be more inclusive towards all demographics? Should the outdoors serve as a space for experiential education in order to foster environmental awareness?
Concentration courses
- ED 205 ( Education in a Complex World, 4 credits), Spring 2016. This course served as an introduction to the complexities of the education systems in the United States and current problems with the systems as well as reforms. It lays a foundation for other education courses for this concentration.
- ED 446 (Reimagining Teaching and Learning, 4 credits), Spring 2017. This course analyzes different teaching methods as well as reforms in the United States, allowing for a further exploration of experiential education in addition to gaining more understanding of methods of teaching.
- ED 450 (Philosophy and Practice of Environmental/ Ecological Education, 4 credits), Spring 2017. This course looks at education practices focusing on ecology. There is also focus on biophysical environmental problems and cultural differences that affect these problems.
- SOAN 225 (Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective, 4 credits). Fall 2018. This course explores relationships in race and ethnicity and how it has evolved. This would allow me to apply knowledge of race and ethnicity in the context of experiential education.
- ENVS 460 (Topics in Environmental Law and Policy, 4 credits), Fall 2017. This course focuses on the introduction of environmental law. This serves as a look into land policy and its relations to outdoor education.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- PHIL 215 (Philosophy and the Environment, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.