The first climate change conference was held in 1979 in Geneva and sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization. Since then there have been many other initiatives and accords along the way. Each report appears to present an evermore grim picture than the previous one. Cumulatively, we have had more than enough science to know what to do, and…

Based on a government document review, 25 stakeholder interviews, and 7 site visits, we examined how and why outdoor play became a focus of Scottish policy for early learning and care programs; we also documented opportunities and barriers to policy implementation. The outdoor play emphasis began as a bottom-up initiative, with a few early…

This paper asks, what is the outdoors, and challenges conceptions of the role the outdoors play in education. It critically examines why a better understanding of the outdoors is important to outdoor education, how wilder places are essential to education, and how learning generated from these places can be translated into sustainable thinking and…

In this paper we argue for the need for a thoughtful and intentional pedagogy in experiential environmental learning that educates for empathetic relationships with humans, nonhuman others, and natural systems, or field philosophy. After discussing the tensions in various ecofeminist perspectives, we highlight relevant ecofeminist ideas and thread…

Freire's influential text, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," relies on both anthropocentric and speciesist arguments to articulate a pedagogy for human liberation. While Freire's anthropocentric understandings of "nature" have been more thoroughly critiqued, less attention has been given to his construction of nonhuman animals, in particular. I argue…

As part of the 2009 North American Association of Environmental Education Research Symposium, this article addresses the cultural and theoretical frameworks that we bring to environmental education, the web of ideas and experiences that define the scope and purpose of the work in its geopolitical context. Originally delivered as a keynote address…

Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue offers an epistemic and ontological orientation upon which an ecological identity can be established as part of an integrated, environmental education. I consider here the significance of a relational self in establishing this ecological identity, as well as the benefits from doing so. This relational,…

In this paper, I explore how histories of colonialism are integral to the Euro-Western idea of wilderness at the heart of much outdoor environmental education. In the context of canoe tripping, I speculate about why the politics of land rarely enters into teaching on the land. Finally, because learning from difficult knowledge often troubles the…

Sailing, a harnessing of wind with canvas to propel a sailboat across distances of water, in winds shaped by landforms, airflow and temperature, requires constant renegotiation by skipper and crew in response to the wind's changeable presence. In a choreography of movement, sails secured by sheets are loosened or reined in by hand to allow wind…

A Blackfoot woman, caught in the act of adultery, was condemned at this site to have her nose cut off as a penalty for her actions. People do not know her story. The tribe cast it on the ground. And so She, Nose Hill, was named. John Laurie Boulevard holds her mound in a circlet of asphalt, defining the map of her "terra incognita." She…

Walt Whitman defies ontology: he strives to be eternal, to journey ever in the now, and thus to forswear beginnings. And there is a great deal of "place" in Whitman, space both concrete and metaphorical, Alabama and Maine, body and "kosmos." But Whitman the man was born in Huntington, Long Island, which is a good a place to start exploring how…

This article discusses how the cultural commons that exist in every community, both rural and urban, carry forward the intergenerational knowledge and skills that enable people to live more mutually supportive lives that are less dependent upon consumerism and that have a smaller ecological footprint. Also discussed is why public schools and…

This article presents a collection of postcards, titled "postcartographia," which is excerpted from an atlas of Mapwork and is one component of a gallery exhibition with the same title. Incorporating photography and poetic text, the postcards explore aesthetic approaches to knowing in the world, specifically, aesthetic ways of knowing places and…

In this article, the author examines the notions of "loss" and "place" in relation to the mourning of one's personal and historical pasts. In doing so, the author draws upon the psychoanalytical writings of Julia Kristeva in an analysis of Jane Urquhart's 2005 novel "A Map of Glass"--a story about emplacement,…

Together with ubiquitous agent evocateurs, Coyote and Raven, the authors engage trickster discourse and narrative shape shifting as they share research protocols and community conversations based on their research with the four Lower Stl'atl'imx communities (Xa'xtsa, N'Quat'qua, Skatin and Samahquam First Nations) of British Columbia, Canada, in…