This thesis reports on a study designed to investigate the nature of environmental education (EE) at one well-established school board operated outdoor education centre called Faraway Dale located in Ontario, Canada. The specific research questions that guided the study were: (a) What are the structures that characterize environmental education for educators at the outdoor education centre? (b) What are the main understandings of environment and education that guide outdoor educators work with environmental education? (c) What are the tensions and contradictions of providing environmental education through an outdoor centre? The primary data sources for this study were the nine outdoor educators who work at the facility. A variety of data collecting strategies were used, over a period of five months, to re-present their experiences of providing EE. Analysis of the data revealed that the nature of EE at the outdoor centre is significantly different from what occurs in mainstream, indoor settings. The overall goal for environmental education at the outdoor centre is to foster a culture that leads to healthy people and healthy environments by encouraging a more equitable interplay among people and nature. This overall goal can be divided into three structures that characterize EE at the centre. These are: connecting people to the environment, encouraging a care-based relational orientation towards the environment, and building agency for living low consumption low impact lifestyles. The findings also confirm that the nature of EE which educators espouse and practice is directly linked to their understandings of the terms ‘environment’ and ‘education’. The major tensions and contradictions of providing EE in an outdoor context are also illuminated. The discussion focuses on the implications of the findings for theory, practice and research in EE and the work of outdoor educators in the field.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/35184 |
| Date | 20 March 2013 |
| Creators | Nazir, Joanne |
| Contributors | Pedretti, Erminia |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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