A People’s Future of Leisure Studies: Political Cultural Black Outdoors Experiences

Public lands and the outdoor opportunities they afford are imbued with a long history of cultural and political contestations between the White settler colonial regime, Black and Native Americans. These contestations are grounded in starkly different values and beliefs systems pertaining to the landscape and human-nature relations. Despite the contestations, whiteness continues to dominate the narratives about public lands and its institutions. Furthermore, the ideology of wilderness - as a place of refuge, the antidote to urban living – remains the main frame of reference to explore outdoor experiences. Thus, as researchers continue to espouse this ideology of wilderness, they effectively suppress the experiences and values that African Americans and other people of color hold towards nature and historically shaped by their social and political realities. The history of slavery, post-slavery and Black dispossession, have conjured up innovative Black diasporic cultural practices of resistance, survival and self-determination. Through hidden outdoor spaces they have forged a culture of resistance, built social structures centered on African traditional practices, and engaged in alternative modes of environmental stewardship. The Black outdoors culture today have roots in this robust legacy of resistance and political struggle for self-determination and provide inspiration for outdoor recreation and environmental education programs that culturally and politically relevant to African Americans. In this paper we engage in an investigation on Black peoples’ political outlook of the outdoors and/or their political outlook on engagement with those spaces both historically and presently. In doing so, we first call attention to the need to critically examine diversity practices designed to accommodate a multi-cultural society and how they contribute to a cultural hegemony. We also review the history of research on outdoor experiences putting into sharper relief the Euro-centric values that dominate the analysis and maintain the cultural power of white racial identities. Finally, pulling from African American literary works, we propose Black-centered interpretations of nature centered on their cultural worldviews and political resistance against hegemonic models of dispossession, abstraction and commodification. The aim here is to advocate for the co-existence of multiple cultural imaginaries of nature defined by the social and political realities of different racialized people, thus responding to the call for different paradigms of outdoor recreation highlighted in this special issue.

Local Partnerships for Health on National Forests

The USDA Forest Service has recently piloted health partnerships that facilitate therapeutic outdoor experiences on national forests, building on the growing evidence of the multiple health benefits of activities and time spent in nature. This article presents brief case studies of three pilot partnerships between national forests and health organizations in California, Indiana, and Georgia (USA). These partnerships deliver nature-based programming for the general public as well as those who are in recovery from major surgeries, have been diagnosed with cancer, and face chronic health challenges. To help recreation managers and policy makers understand the potential for such local health partnerships in a federal context, we describe the programs’ enabling conditions, their incorporation of service and stewardship activities, and the challenges and successes they have faced. Insights inform an expanding variety of health partnership models that advance the interconnectedness of human and ecosystem health on public lands as a fundamental dimension of sustainable recreation management.

Enabling Wilderness

<p>Internationally known for its picturesque landscapes, New Zealand encourages both locals and tourists to experience them first hand by walking one of the many tracks around the country, an activity locally known as tramping. The Department of Conservation has identified a small number of these tracks as showcasing particularly picturesque areas; naming them the ‘Great Walks’ of New Zealand. These allow fit individuals to traverse unique landscapes over multiple days, staying over night in rustic huts. The relationship between healthy wellbeing and outdoor experiences is well documented; however, not every fit individual is physically able to experience some of New Zealand’s most significant landscapes due to the difficulty of access. This thesis combines elements of landscape architecture with the existing practises of construction in a conservation area to propose a new ‘Great Walk’ for New Zealand that would allow athletes with a physical impairment to experience New Zealand’s unique landscapes. In doing so, it will provide the opportunity for physically impaired people to continue tramping, or discover a new outdoor activity that not only improves their physical and mental wellbeing; but also allows them to establish personal connections to the land they are from or visiting. Physically pulling/pushing and manoeuvring through ‘backcountry’ landscapes, this research-led-design encourages the physically impaired community to engage with difficult terrains in a multi-sensorial manner.</p>

Enabling Wilderness

<p>Internationally known for its picturesque landscapes, New Zealand encourages both locals and tourists to experience them first hand by walking one of the many tracks around the country, an activity locally known as tramping. The Department of Conservation has identified a small number of these tracks as showcasing particularly picturesque areas; naming them the ‘Great Walks’ of New Zealand. These allow fit individuals to traverse unique landscapes over multiple days, staying over night in rustic huts. The relationship between healthy wellbeing and outdoor experiences is well documented; however, not every fit individual is physically able to experience some of New Zealand’s most significant landscapes due to the difficulty of access. This thesis combines elements of landscape architecture with the existing practises of construction in a conservation area to propose a new ‘Great Walk’ for New Zealand that would allow athletes with a physical impairment to experience New Zealand’s unique landscapes. In doing so, it will provide the opportunity for physically impaired people to continue tramping, or discover a new outdoor activity that not only improves their physical and mental wellbeing; but also allows them to establish personal connections to the land they are from or visiting. Physically pulling/pushing and manoeuvring through ‘backcountry’ landscapes, this research-led-design encourages the physically impaired community to engage with difficult terrains in a multi-sensorial manner.</p>

Pre-Service Teachers in the Outdoors: A Phenomenological Exploration

While a child’s sense of wonder is thought to come naturally, less is known about how adults foster or connect with their sense of wonder. For the purposes of this exploration, wonder is the openness that comes when one dwells with the present moment, allowing questions to arise, rather than using wonder as a tool to answer a question (Gadamer, 2004; van Manen, 2014). Spending time in the outdoors is a common way to engage wonder, but there may be differences in the ways adults experience their surroundings compared to children. If teachers or parents aim to foster a child’s sense of wonder then it is important to understand how adults experience and connect to the outdoors so they can model and promote the connection for children. This paper explores the experiences of adults in the outdoors in order to better understand the barriers and paths that may lead to wonder. Five anecdotes from outdoor experiences are phenomenologically analyzed to better understand the lived experience of adults in the outdoors. Themes from the anecdotes are discussed, as well as the implications for teacher education programs.

Highlighting altruism in geoscience careers aligns with diverse US student ideals better than emphasizing working outdoors

A common approach to attract students in the United States to the geosciences is to emphasize outdoor experiences in the natural world. However, it is unclear how successful this strategy is. Specifically, the geosciences have been less successful than other sciences at recruiting a diverse workforce that reflects different perspectives and life experiences. Here we present a survey of students enrolled in College Algebra at a Hispanic-serving institution in the southwestern United States where, of 1550 students surveyed, 55.3% identified as an underrepresented minority (URM). We find that surveyed students care little about working outdoors. Instead, they rate altruistic factors, such as helping people or the environment, as most important. Female respondents rate these factors higher than male respondents. We also find that many respondents know little about what a career in geoscience entails. We argue that better informing students about the altruistic potential of geoscience careers would be an effective strategy to broaden recruitment.

School leaders' perceptions of Missouri's outdoor leadership experience

Training school administrators to be more effective leaders through Missouri's Outdoor Leadership Experience is a unique concept that has been in place since 1987. Many other fields have used outdoor experiences for leadership training. This qualitative study discusses participants' perceptions of their experience and how it has impacted their leadership moving forward. Analysis of data was based upon Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory and recommendations for future design of the program were made.

Left to Their Own Devices? A Mixed Methods Study Exploring the Impacts of Smartphone Use on Children’s Outdoor Experiences

The growing use of smartphones has been pointed out as one of the main reasons for the decrease in children’s outdoor time. However, there is still a gap in our understanding of how smartphone use affects children’s outdoor experiences and activities. The aim of the study is to explore children’s dependency on their smartphones, what smartphone functions children use when outdoors and how smartphone use affects children’s outdoor experiences. The study uses a mixed methods design which implements interviews with a small sample of children (N = 34) in order to help develop a questionnaire for a larger sample (N = 1148). Both datasets are included in the analysis with a complimentary perspective. The results suggest that children are highly dependent on having their smartphones available as an integrated part of their lives. However, smartphones also create favorable conditions for rich and valuable outdoor lives by expanding children’s and parents’ sense of security, children’s outdoor sociality, and children’s opportunities to mold their outdoor experiences. We stress that children’s passion for the digital world needs to be reconsidered as not ‘all bad’, but more as a condition in modern children’s lives and an asset to embrace in future strategies for actively engaging children in outdoor activities.

The Learning to Learn Competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers: An Outdoor and e/m-Learning Experience in the Museum

This study was developed with Early Childhood Preservice Teachers within the framework of the Teaching and Learning of Social Sciences over three academic years (2017–2018, 2018–2019, and 2019–2020) at the University of Alcalá. The main objective was to improve the learning to learn competence during teacher training from an outdoor experience at the Museum of Guadalajara (Spain), using e/m-learning tools (Blackboard Learn, Google Forms, QR codes, and websites) and the inquiry-based learning approach. To ascertain the level of acquisition of this competence in those teachers who were being trained, their self-perception—before and after—of the outdoor experience was assessed through a system of categories adapted from the European Commission. The results show a certain improvement in this competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers. Additionally, this outdoor experience shows the insufficient educational adaptation of the museum to the early childhood education stage from a social sciences point of view. Finally, we highlight the importance of carrying out outdoor experiences from an inquiry-based education approach. These outdoor experiences should be carried out in places like museums to encourage contextualized and experiential learning of the youngest in formal education.