1,720,964 research outputs found
Fostering transformative learning: a phenomenological study into the lived experience of reflection and transformation in adventure education
No full textThis phenomenological and interpretive study presents stories of the lived teaching and learning experiences of participants on adventure programmes in Singapore. Although learning in adventure education has been said to be transformational and that outdoor leaders play a crucial role in promoting such learning, there has been little empirical research into the lived experiences of leaders and learners that might provide pedagogical insights into how these transformations take place. The process of adventure learning as a phenomenon has largely assumed to be mysterious, and has been called the adventure education ‘black box’ (Ewert, 1983). Adventure experiences are presumed to be able to lead to transformative-like learning, however no pedagogy for transformative learning on empirical evidence has yet been proposed. Therefore, this study was guided by the following research question: How do the lived experiences of participants and outdoor leaders lead to understanding and promoting transformative learning in adventure education? The study was conducted in two parts. First it critiqued adventure education discourses and demonstrated how in theory and in practice, adventure education has neglected the potential of teaching and learning in three ways: (1) through the misunderstood meaning of ‘experience’; (2) through the undermined role of ‘reflection’ in adventure learning; and (3) through an erasure of the role of outdoor leaders due to the promotion of a universalised adventure education paradigm. Consequently, the transdisciplinary literature of teaching and learning were critiqued through an examination of the existential ground (van Manen, 1990) upon which human experiences are unavoidably ‘lived’. This critique was coupled with a focused review of reflection and transformative learning scholarship to provide a conceptual framework that guided data collection and interpretation in the second phase of the study. Second, the reflective writings of 61 participants enrolled in three separate adventure programmes were reviewed. The courses ranged from 5 to 21 days in duration. Ten participants were selected and interviewed, while four outdoor leaders responsible for the conduct of the adventure programmes were also interviewed to provide perspectives of their own teaching and learning experiences. The written and oral data interpreted produced 14 biographical case studies of people’s responses to adventure experiences. These cases were combined and thematised, as guided by the conceptual framework established earlier, to present a collective lived experience of adventure education in using narrative inquiry and hermeneutics, specifically through stories and storytelling. The resulting research text (van Manen, 1990) is presented as a fictional novella, Tile Island, as part of this thesis to illuminate the “meaning, structure and essence of lived experience(s)” (Patton, 2002, p. 104) of the participants and leaders in adventure education. Revealing the adventure education ‘black box’ through fictional representation uncovers, discovers, freezes, creates or re-imagines meaning and articulation of subsequent knowing. Reflection from the narratives found support to argue for the reinterpretation of meaning inherent within the fundamental constructs of adventure education. The plausible insights also exposed the significance of engaging learners holistically in lived body, lived relation, lived space and time, and lived stories so as to encourage reflection and transformative learning in adventure education. This study contributes, from an empirical basis, insights into the adventure education phenomenon and an understanding of limitations and possibilities of a change-responsive pedagogy of adventure education. In addition, the demonstration of the use of a very novel approach to methodology and (re)presentation of data/findings adds to the small, but increasing, number of studies using emergent methodologies in adventure education discourses. The key aim of such studies is surely to reveal for pedagogical consideration the previously hidden or mysterious inner-world of human subjectivity
Encountering risk: 'everyday' experiences of outdoor adventure education instructors
No full textThis thesis is a qualitative study of the lived experience of risk in outdoor adventure education and was guided by the following research question: How do outdoor adventure education instructors experience everyday risks and make decisions in their work? Existing research and professional literature on this topic is largely quantitative based and has tended to focus on accident trends and patterns. As such this study contributes to the current body of knowledge by expanding this topic through the use of qualitative methods. Specifically this thesis departs from the prevailing positivist and post-positivist approaches, and employs a phenomenological orientation to take a constructionist approach to risk in which the everyday experiences of outdoor adventure education (OAE) instructors are given a voice. The insights found in their stories enrich the current body of knowledge about risk and decisionmaking in OAE. A unique aspect of the study involved a critical review of a wide range of risk research and literature that was sourced from both inside and outside of OAE. This was done in an attempt to ascertain where common and taken-for-granted ideas, concepts and practices relating to risk in OAE have their origins and, in some cases, raised questions about their suitability for use in OAE. This critical review also prepared the researcher for the datagathering phase of the research. In the study phase of the research a series of three in depth 'phenomenological interviews' (Seidman, 1998) were completed with each of three participants who had an extensive employment history as instructors in OAE in Asia. These nine interviews in total resulted in a considerable amount of 'experiential data' (van Manen, 1990) which was coded, analysed and thematised to produce research texts (van Manen, 1990) about the phenomenon under investigation. An investigation into the lived experience of risk is enlightening as OAE instructors usually take a duel approach to risk. Risks to program participants are both managed for safety, but are also intentionally used as a form of pedagogy. As the research was conducted in Asia this thesis also contributes to the body of OAE knowledge from this region as it explores a phenomenon (OAE) which has both international and local dimensions. Four themes emerged from this study. The most significant of these is the use of folk models of risk and decision-making by OAE instructors when engaged in their daily practice. The other themes identified were the role of human subjectivity in the lived experience of risk; experience, risk and judgment; and, finally that of risk as a form of pedagogy
Ecopoetic practice : Writing the wounded land
No full textIn this article the author discusses the experience of poetic writing as a form of autoethnographic practice. Poetic writing, more than other textual forms, offers considerable potential to represent the journey toward "empathetic insidedness" between author, culture, and a sense of place. The author draws examples from his recently published collection of poems titled The Song of the Wounded River. The poems were first drafted on a long canoe journey down the river to the old farm pioneered by the author's ancestors over a century ago. In an ecopoetics of place the writer strives to reconcile differences between past, present, and future and between their experiences of inner and outer landscapes. In an echo of Romanticism the ecopoet writes to heal the world's wounds through singing the land. Seen in this light poetry and empathy provide the counterbalance to science and rationality. Both are needed to sustain the human relationship with the Earth. Humans damage places not because they fail to understand them, but because they are yet to feel for them, like kin. This article draws together and discusses the physical search for place, the act of poetic writing, and the cultural significance of this kind of work. © 2012 SAGE Publications
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
‘Through the unknown, remembered gate’: the Brian Nettleton lecture – Outdoors Victoria conference, 2022
Full text linkThis paper is an adapted version of the Brian Nettleton Lecture given at the Outdoors Victoria Conference, 2022. It explores how the last two decades have seen an ever-accelerating Digital Revolution which has impacted on almost every aspect of human experience to the point that it is now omnipresent. Life is now mediated through the screen. As a result, children and young people have become hyper-vigilant, overly anxious, experience a sense of climate trauma, and have decreasing access to, and time spent in, the outdoors. In addition, children have just experienced two years of isolation as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and evidence suggests that they are already experiencing significant mental health issues as a result. This paper considers the implications of this for Outdoors Victoria and Outdoor Education. © The Author(s) 2023
Place-Responsiveness in Outdoor Environmental Education
No full textThis chapter discusses why place-responsiveness is an important consideration for outdoor environmental educators. Understanding the philosophical and pedagogical foundations of place provides insights into what has driven the rise of place-based education. Building upon this, the chapter looks at how outdoor educators have developed place-responsive approaches that allow them and their students to connect to outdoor landscapes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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