The way we story our lives shapes the way we understand and experience the world. This paper draws on concepts from narrative therapy and examples of traditional wisdom to argue that an important step in recognizing our interdependence and co-extensive relationships with the more-than-human world is to introduce language that acknowledges…

In a world in need of profound change, the importance of "transformative education" is increasingly recognized. However, barriers abound in our Higher Education Institutions, including that educators often have little notion of "how" to make their teaching more transformative "in practice." This paper builds on our…

Experiential education partnered with guided reflection is thought to support students with higher-order thinking skills. In this study, 44 reflections from two university-level sustainability courses were compared. In both courses students were asked to write a reflection, but only one course used the Reflective Learning Framework (RLF). Tests of…

For decades, a review of environmental education initiatives in and beyond schools indicates that many of them were implemented from an anthropocentric perspective. The rationale behind them is often that we must not destroy the environment because doing so is harmful for ourselves, human beings. One striking feature of the various forms of…

Similar to other fields, environmental education has begun to embrace the significance of nonhuman animals. This essay examines developments in the natural sciences, particularly in the field of cognitive ethology, that focus on the concept of empathy as a paradigm for conceptualizing human/nonhuman animal relationships. Drawing on my own…

The paper discusses alienation from the more-than-human world and the need for nature pedagogies through the experience of nature journaling in an environmental education course in higher education. Students at a University Department of Early Childhood Education in Greece engaged in nature journaling through an assignment that encouraged them to…

Purpose: For professional sustainability work, graduates need to be able to work in teams and collaborate with stakeholders; in other words, they need to have developed interpersonal competence. There is growing evidence that project-based sustainability courses facilitate interpersonal competence development. However, research so far has focused…

Many institutions of higher education increasingly place a focus on various forms of experiential education, including personal reflections. While much work has been done in this and related areas, the resources currently available are not sufficient to effectively guide, assess, and evaluate student learning through reflection. Guiding students…

Guided by sociocultural perspectives on the importance of place as a resource for learning, we investigated 14- and 15-year old students' understandings of their community and water quality during a school-based watershed unit. Methods included a theory-driven thematic analysis of field notes and video transcripts from four biology classrooms, a…

This article draws from the experience of outdoor and experiential educators working in the context of a radical, long-term formal public education research project. One of the accidental findings from the research is that experienced outdoor educators may have particular pedagogical skills, likely honed by the contexts in which they work, that…

In an earlier paper I identified two key forms of "meaningful experience" for participants on a wilderness river rafting journey, namely a feeling of humility and being alive to the present. However, space considerations led me to describe only the first of these forms in any detail. In this paper I identify and describe the qualities of…

This paper examines the work-based learning about employability reported by 26 undergraduate Geography and Environmental Management students on part-time, unpaid work placements. The students' "reflective essays" emphasized their learning more in terms of emotional challenges than in terms of skills, as being pushed out of their…

The impact of transformational leadership, experiential learning, and reflective journaling on the conservation ethic of non-science majors in a general education survey course was investigated. The main research questions were: (1) Is the Conservation of Biodiversity professor a transformational leader? (2) Is there a difference in the…

Preservice educators engaged in experiential, place-based learning through a semester-long assignment in which they observed a specific place in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, and kept a nature journal. The assignment was organized around two pivotal elements: direct, sensory experience and time in place. Both elements added vital dimensions…

This paper considers the complexity of learning and decision-making in modern society and argues that experiential education should embrace this complexity. It argues that experiential programmes should provide independent learning experiences that address the capacities of learners, the value contexts in which they learn, and that taking…