This thesis is about learning at a residential outdoor education centre [pseudonym:- Wild Country Hall]. It poses and answers three questions: • How useful might discursive positioning be as a perspective on learning? • What are the discourses at Wild Country Hall and how are they different to schooling discourses? • How might neo-Liberal discursive practices, including performativity and current schooling orthodoxies have affected the pedagogic practices at this centre? The review of literature provides an overview of the key literature on outdoor, adventure and experiential learning, considering these through the lenses of learning as acquisition, participation and transformation, before discussing the literature on the discursive positioning of identity. Literature on the discursive practices of outdoor centres is then considered in relation to literature on neo-Liberalism and performativity in schools. The methodology is ethnographic. Participant observations were conducted over a period of five years whilst children were participating in both the organised adventure activities and the residential life of the centre. Searches of the centre’s documentary archives, and follow up interviews with 22 children (aged eight to 11) and three adults were used to add richness to the observational data, and especially to better understand reported participant gains. Analysis was undertaken by coding themes in the data using QSR NVivo N6. The findings suggest that acquisitional and participatory perspectives on learning are not totally adequate for explaining the reported changes in outlook and behaviour of the children who took part in the research. These benefits may be more usefully conceptualised as discursively re-positioned identity. It is suggested that the perspective on learning as discursive positioning may be usefully employed by those studying residential outdoor education in the future. The findings show a number of over-arching discourses that dominate the life of Wild Country Hall. These include place - including the appreciation, care of and respect for nature, the sense of awe and wonder, understanding and protecting the environment – risk, challenge and adventure; and consequent confidence and resilience building by children through facing and over-coming their fears. Whilst some of these fears are linked to the adventure activities of the centre (such as fears of heights, water), other fears are associated with the residential nature of the centre; encountering and coping with homesickness, living with new people, encountering strange customs and unfamiliar social practices. So important were these unfamiliar discourses to the participating children that they may be looked upon as ‘rites of passage’. The findings suggest that encountering unfamiliar discourses may explain the efficacy of learning at Wild Country Hall. Some of the pedagogic practices at Wild Country Hall were found to valorise what may be described as ‘classroom discourses’, and these have tended to formalise learning at the centre. It is suggested, therefore, that this outdoor centre has been influenced by performativity and classroom orthodoxy, themselves shaped by neo-Liberal agenda. These influences may be narrowing the range of discourses available and limiting the centre’s continuing ability to provide unfamiliar discourses, possibly to the detriment of children’s learning. The conclusion makes a number of recommendations for policy practice and research. Recommendations for policy and practice focus on the narrowing tendencies observed at this centre, suggesting shifts in policy to retain the distinctiveness of outdoor education centres. Recommendations for research suggest that follow-up studies would be useful to test the findings in other outdoor centres and other areas of learning, whilst more methodological work could be done on memory and data research sites where contemporaneous notation and digital recording may be difficult or impossible.

ABSTRACT Narrative conflict coaching is a counseling technique which focuses on separating clients from their problems and encouraging them to see their lives and futures from new perspectives. It has been used in a variety of arenas and is consistent with other practices within the field of narrative conflict resolution, such as narrative mediation. In this project I utilized qualitative research methods to analyze the immediate effectiveness of conflict coaching questioning techniques within the setting of a counseling conversation. The analysis focuses on the detail of the process of narrative conflict coaching more than on the final outcomes. The data was collected through two different conflict coaching conversations, one of which was about a conflict in a work context and one in a family context. The conversational data collected was compared with a set of detailed guidelines for narrative conflict coaching specified by Dr. John Winslade and the question that was asked was whether the conflict coaching process corresponded with these guidelines. The data confirmed that this was the case and also showed some indicators of the effectiveness of narrative conflict coaching techniques through documenting the participants’ responses to each of the steps in the process. Analysis of discursive positioning from statements early in each of the conversations and also from late in each conversation indicated positioning shifts in the direction of creating an alternative narrative into which the participants might live. Both participants were shown to reach a place of difference in perspective in relation to the conflict story. It is therefore argued that the guidelines for a conflict coaching process are adaptable in at least two different areas of life. It cannot yet be generalized to all areas of conflict but looks promising for multiple personal conflict situations.

Cette recherche propose, grâce aux outils de la sociolinguistique, de l’analyse du discours, et de l’anthropologie, d’interroger la validité et de déconstruire la pertinence discursive de la notion d’identité ethnique qui est promue dans les discours socio-politiques burkinabè, à partir d’une enquête ethnographique réalisée auprès de deux familles, l’une se présentant à moi comme bisa, l’autre comme mossi. Elle montre comment l’identité mobilisée par les sujets parlants est sans cesse déconstruite, reconstruite et renégociée dans l’interaction, ce qui me permet de mettre en cause la notion d’identité des sujets parlants, afin d’étudier plutôt les multiples processus d’identification. En questionnant la manière dont ces identifications mouvantes et fluctuantes se construisent dans le discours en fonction de stratégies interactionnelles de rapprochement ou d’éloignement du sujet parlant par rapport à l’interlocuteur, des questions de pouvoir sous-jacentes aux interactions, et de l’historicité des discours mobilisés, l’étude met en évidence le fait que ces différentes constructions se manifestent dans la fluctuation des opérations de mises en frontières, la renégociation des catégories discursives, et le réagencement des positionnements subjectifs ; et me conduit à redéfinir les conditions méthodologiques et épistémologiques de l’analyse des discours de mise en frontières en tant qu’ils font émerger la fluctuation permanente dans les positionnements sociaux et subjectifs. / This research means to question the discursive validity of ethnic identity that is promoted in Burkinabe sociopolitical discourses, with sociolinguistic, discourse analysis and anthropological methods. I realized for this purpose an ethnographic investigation within two families, one presented as Bisa, the other as Mossi. It shows how speaking subjects rebuild and renegotiate their identity in the interaction, which allows me to question this notion of identity and study multiple identification processes instead. Considering the way these fluctuating identifications appear in the discourse according to interactional strategies, power issues, and historicity of solicited discourses, displays that theses constructions emerge in the fluctuation of discursive boundaries, the renegotiation of discursive categories, and the reconstruction of subjective positioning. This leads me to a redefinition of methodological and epistemological conditions of the analysis of discourses that create boundaries, as long as they enable the emergence of permanent fluctuation in social and subjective positioning.