beamingsimon

Here’s an article about how to build a two person snow shelter that is quicker, drier and safer than a conventional snowhole. This method was created and refined over the last 30 years by Trond Augestad and Jannicke Høyem, friluftsliv staff at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences.

I joined Trond and Jannicke for a winter skills course in Finse in February, 2020, and was blown away by how easy a kantgrop is to construct.

Special thanks to the Professional Mountaineer for their permission to share this article.

A pet project of mine over the last four years has been trying to better understand how I can better teach and learn with today’s young people. My interest in this topic was sparked by attending an inspirational keynote by Mark McCrindle in Australia, in 2016.

The attached piece was published in the Swedish magazine, Idrott & hälsa, early in 2020. Of course, an article like this is already out of date by the time it’s published. Corona has already accelerated our ideas and practices regarding teaching and learning and the future is exciting!

The official report from our study which interrogated school inspection reports in Scotland for instances of outdoor learning has been published.  Please click here to download the report.

 

I’m delighted to announce that my co-authored book with Chris Mackie and Matt Atencio – Adventure & Society – is officially out!

If you’re interested in reading about the book’s content and structure, or purchasing a softcover copy or e-book, you can find more information on the Palgrave website.

Click on the following hyperlinks for free copies of the Frontmatter and of Chapter 1.

I really hope you enjoy the read.  I sure learned a ton through the research and writing!

 

 

 

I’m proud and delighted to be able to release the full commissioned research report that was delivered to Gordonstoun School.   Both the School and I hope the findings will give further support to local authorities that seek to boost their arguments for more importance to be placed on providing more out-of-classroom learning experiences for their children.

Special thanks to the wonderful Gordonstoun team who worked with us: Eve Poole, Sabine Richards, Marina Edge, and Lisa Kerr; and to three outstanding researchers: Roger Scrutton, Chris Mackie, and Jenni Hume.

Download the full report here.

Follow this link to Gordonstoun’s summary booklet of the research.

Here’s a short paper that was published last year in Pathways (the Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education).  It aims to synthesize key theoretical points in the growing body of place-based education literature.  Click here to download.

School Travel Organiser is a magazine for teachers.  I wrote a short article on Adventurous Learning for their readership.  This might be the kind of easily digestible piece that can be shared with those colleagues and managers who require a little more persuasion before stepping outside the classroom…

You can download it here.

Hats off to Jun Ohmae and Takako Takano for putting together an outstanding conference on Place-based Education in Tokyo in January, 2016.  The conference proceedings have been produced in Japanese and English and feature transcriptions of the four keynote addresses.  The speakers were Amba Jamir from India, Ong Wei Lin from Singapore, Prof. Toshio Kuwako from Japan, and little old me.

Click here to download the 2.6 MB document.

A few months ago, I did a mini-lecture for Cornell University’s MOOC on Environmental Education: Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems, which was led by Professor Marianne Krasny.

Although I look at my notes a little too much, the four minute video covers some of the content from Chapter 5 in the Adventurous Learning book that I wrote with Mike Brown. Special thanks to Nicol Craig, who filmed and produced the video so expertly.

Click here to be taken to the video.

The good people at Routledge have kindly made the Preface, Foreword (by James Raffan), and Chapter 1, available as one pdf.  Enjoy!

Click here for download