Greetings

and welcome! I hope you find this site a source for interesting information and knowledge sharing. It’s designed for educators interested in outdoor, environmental and experiential education with a primary focus on Ontario but also beyond.

I invite you to explore , offer your own insights and resources, and thereby engage and expand this community of practice through research and knowledge sharing.

By way of personal introduction,

let me share a part of my academic journey. Throughout the 1990s, while guiding wilderness trips around the World and as an outdoor educator taking school children out into nature, I became curious about how time spent in natural places with others connected people in unique and intimate ways. I first thought about this when working at summer camp in Wisconsin in the 80s as a cabin counselor. The girls in the cabin were not bonding well with one another at the beginning of the season. A couple of weeks into the summer, we went on a three-day canoe trip on the Flambeau River together and the girls began to communicate in increasingly more positive and productive ways. I wondered what impact that wilderness travel experience may have had in this shift in their behavior.

This experience alongside many other outdoor, wilderness trips led me into research about how people experience the outdoors and experience each other when spending time in the natural environment as a group member. Throughout my career, I have furthered this area of study by examining the ways in which outdoor, environmental education can promote pro-social and pro-environmental change.

Merging scholarship, teaching, research and experience

My scholarship is aimed at bridging the theory/practice gap and is grounded in critical pedagogy and Freiran praxis; my teaching/research applies to trip guiding, environmental education policy, social justice pedagogy, experiential education, and friluftsliv; and my experiences are enriched through colleagues, students, travel, professional development, and engagement with others.