Ever since the author first read about the concept of a "Sit Spot" in "Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature" by Young, Haas and McGown (2010), it struck a strong chord within her. She has been aware of the concept of having a special place within nature that people are connected to and return to often, but she hadn't known that there are…

The unique "Conference on Wilderness Educational Expeditions: International Perspectives and Practices" took place from June 27 to July 13, 2010. The conference comprised 14 outdoor educators from Canada, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Japan participating in a 250 km-long canoe expedition on the Mara and Burnside Rivers in…

Any activity that involves learning, whether it is for therapeutic purposes, traditional education, or outdoor education, is experiential education. In particular, outdoor educators allow participants to experiment with their behaviour in the form of play, for the most part out-of-doors. Many in the industry refer to play as adventure. Those who…

Most educators have spent many days and thousands of dollars attending academic conferences around the world, only to find themselves sitting in ballrooms, listening to speakers and watching PowerPoint presentations. In most cases, this conference format represents a profound pedagogical contradiction for outdoor and experiential educators. This…

According to the author, Mike was his close friend and also his mentor. Mike helped him find his way into teaching and he drew him into traditional winter camping. His first winter camping experience was with Mike 16 years ago in Killbear Provincial Park, near Parry Sound. Mike was thinking up Community Environmental Leadership Program (CELP) way…

When the author thinks back to all the wilderness educational expeditions he has led, one thing sticks out in his mind: While he knows these were amazing experiences for the students (primarily university undergraduates), could he have done more to help them transition into the experience and out again afterwards? The author has continued to…

Although the author loves winter camping and holds the Inuit culture in great regard, thinking about material culture in a northern landscape referred to as barren constitutes a daunting lesson. She wondered, when a landscape is barren is it possible at all for someone to find material, make useful items and survive? So it was she joined the Mara…

Outdoor experiential education (OEE) is about hands-on, direct experience; it's about a community of learners; it's about rapt attention and total engagement; it's about discovering oneself, one's peers and one's surroundings. The author has experienced many extended and remote wilderness trips. He has spent most of his teaching career at a dozen…

In many North American schools, the acquirement of knowledge is encouraged in the most fractious of ways. At the high-school level, knowledge is often channelled into separate, specialized units of study. Rarely is an effort made to develop cross-subject, unifying themes that can help students recognize important points of curricular overlap.…

Trek School is an outdoor school program for any Grade 11 students in Regina, Saskatchewan. During the program, students engage in a series of classroom, outdoor, and experiential activities. The various courses are taught through these experiences. The program is designed to help students develop in the areas of independent learning, critical and…

About 20 years ago, a number of Yukon schools took a different approach to outdoor education and outdoor pursuits. During the 1970s and 1980s, most Yukon high schools and junior high schools offered a course called Outdoor Education. These courses fit into the conventional blocks in a school timetable. Outdoor activities longer than these blocks…

Recently, the authors have been collecting data for a research project that explores secondary school boys' perceptions of masculinity. They spent a week in Leigh's grade 11 philosophy class discussing gender while observing and video recording students' perception for analysis. In their research, they used Colour Blind as a vehicle for unearthing…

Pressley Ridge is a non-profit organization that provides an array of treatment services to at-risk and developmentally delayed children that allow them to remain close to their families and communities. In 2007 Pressley Ridge Portugal started an experiential education and adventure therapy center. This pilot project aims to help participants…

This article examines the role material culture and making items can serve in establishing a sense of place or informing place-based educational practices. It is arranged around six principles that, if used in a learning context, connect material from a place to an enhanced comprehension of a sense of place. A critical component in making the…

There are moments in outdoor education that can only be described as magical. These are times when the wider world mirrors human stories with an uncanny synchronicity, as if choreographed by an unseen hand. Often the only thing people can really do is try and stay out of the way. In the author's own work, the footsteps moving through such magical…