Project One - Other Ways of Learning

Over my placement year I realized there was other ways of creating a greater learning for the clients, most of my learning in the outdoors I have personally done have been the focus on attaining a skill in certain activity’s. Loynes (2003) however concept of adventure experiences were viewed as a hero’s journey, the paper starts of as narrative story of a two day adventure programme written as a heroic journey. The heroic journey delved into the landscape, emotions and the challenges faced and the skills gained within the programme. The authors carried out this research as they felt that there were similarities in an outdoor adventure in comparison to a hero’s journey.

They based the narrative story on Cambell 1968 work on a hero’s journey. Cambell focused on the mythic meta-narrative as he called the hero’s journey. He explains that the central characters respond to the call for adventure through passing from the ordinary world and they cross a threshold facing up to the challenges of the guardians of this world, often with the help of a mentor. I felt this is much related to my experience on placement. I was situated on a small island in New Zealand known as great barrier island clients would leave the ordinary world this would be the mainland and then come to great barrier island to face up to the challenges the island had. Campbell goes on to explain that once individuals have entered the extraordinary world they find themselves out of depth they can’t use the magic others seem to use and have no knowing of who to trust. This is very similar to placement as clients travel on boat to a small island have no idea what to expect. However slowly their early encounters teach them who friends and foes are and are able to learn skills and knowledge as they go. This enables them to resolve the dangers they face and overall achieve the quest. This is much like a week course on great barrier the beginning of the week clients are struggling to learn new skills and are not confident with facing certain activity’s but with the use of companions and a mentor they are able to achieve things they didn’t believe possible and come to the end of the week as a success.

Figure 1: Great Barrier Island the extraordinary world.

Loyne’s (2003) also expresses that outdoor adventure is a learning environment that is frequently allied with experiential education one description that Loyne’s gives for outdoor learning for outdoor spaces is physical space, they define physical space as this space is understood as a real landscape rich in natural and cultural history. Gaining knowledge about this stored landscape is the primary aim. Knowledge of this story is understood as giving power to the knower. I felt this statement related to my placement year as working on such a remote island it was bursting with species, landscapes, cultures and also a vast amount of history behind it. It was a great place as a facilitator to be able to learn myself about the island and then being able to give this knowledge over to clients. I felt that students that would undergo this week would take away more than just skills from activity’s they would take back knowledge of species of the island, the story’s behind the island and the different cultures they met whilst spending their time here. I hope that this type of knowledge gained is just as important as skills gained and when going back to friends and family they talk about the physical space they spent their week. I will carry on to use this technique of providing a greater knowledge of the surroundings not just the activity alone as I feel it will be much more beneficial for clients interest within an adventure programme. 

Future readings:

Linda Allin & Barbara Humberstone, (2010) Introducing ‘Journey(s)’ in adventure and outdoor learning research. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning 10(2), pages 71-75.

Smelser, N.J. 2009. The odyssey experience: Physical, social, psychological and spiritual journeys, Berkely: University of California Press.

Stewart, A. 2008. Whose place, whose history? Outdoor environmental education pedagogy as ‘reading’ the landscape.Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 8(2): 79–98.

References:

Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces (Vol. 17). New World Library.

Loynes, C. (2003). Narratives of Agency: The hero’s journey as a construct for personal development through outdoor adventure. In Bewegungs-und körperorientierte Ansätze in der Sozialen Arbeit (pp. 133-143). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.