Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

The purpose of this article is to explore and problematise teachers’ talk about outdooreducation in New Zealand. The focus is on what can be said, how it is said and thediscursive effects of such ways of speaking. The inquiry draws on Foucauldiantheoretical insights to analyse interview transcripts derived from semi-structured interviewswith eight outdoor education teachers who work at secondary schools in NewZealand. Findings suggest that different discourses co-exist and are intertwined in theparticipants’ talk. Associated with a dominating discourse of adventure are subdiscoursesof risk and safety, pursuit-based activities, skill and assessment. Connected to adiscourse of learning are subdiscourses of environment, sustainability and socialcritique. Resistance towards a dominating discourse of adventure with pursuit-basedactivities can be traced in a discourse of learning in the form of a more placeresponsivepedagogy.

The article draws on qualitative research from reflective journals of a group of university students based on their experiences from a month-long outdoor and environmental education journey in the Canadian Rockies. The article is concerned with the stories that are communicated through an embodied engagement with place(s), particularly the Brazeau River and the surrounding regions. The “relational materialist” approach (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010), combined with a focus on the entangled topics of skill, place, and journey provides a framework for empirical materials collection and analysis. Findings suggest that a decentring of humans in favour of mutual and relational engagements with matter and the more-than-human, in combination with place-stories and outdoor skill development that involves reading the land from embodied learning with/in its naturalcultural history, opens up new possibilities for embodied relations to place(s).

This article examines how friluftsliv is conceptualised as a learning area within the Swedish physical education and health (PEH) curriculum. The aim is to question the legitimacy of these understandings by bringing previously marginalised discourses to the fore. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the concept of becoming-place was employed as an analytical tool, through which the curriculum documents were analysed. The main conclusions are that friluftsliv, as expressed in the Swedish curriculum, is underpinned by the notion of being the same as outdoor leisure and recreation. This, in combination with a dominant physical activity discourse in PEH, works to legitimise what is regarded as “normal” and “true” learning objectives in school-based friluftsliv. An alternative reading, using becoming-place as a critical lens, challenges the current people-centred notion of friluftsliv as a learning area in PEH curriculum. Furthermore, becoming-place offer possibilities for reconceptualising school-based friluftsliv to better respond to vision of the Swedish curriculum.

This article explores the educational potential of a place-responsive pedagogy to teaching and learning in friluftsliv within the Swedish physical education and health (PEH) curriculum. The article draws on qualitative empirical materials from a year-long research project together with a group of high school PEH teachers working in seventh thru ninth grade. Following Deleuze and Guattari (1987) the concept of becoming-place was employed as an analytical tool in exploring modes of thinking and doing school-based friluftsliv. Findings suggest that the current understanding of friluftsliv as curriculum, perceived as outdoor leisure and recreation, limits teachers use of school-based friluftsliv. The article’s key finding is that a place-responsive pedagogy enabled these teachers to work within school-based friluftsliv in new and innovative ways and have them engage in cross-curricular teaching and learning initiatives more locally.