An outdoor and environmental education community of practice : self stylisation or normalisation?
journal contribution
posted on 2012-01-01, 00:00authored byMarylou Preston
In this article, I draw on a qualitative longitudinal study to explore the influence of a tertiary Outdoor and Environmental Education (OEE) course on the formation of environmental ethics among students. In this task, I bring together Lave & Wenger (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) concept of communities of practice and Michel Foucault’s later work on ethics to underscore some of the difficulties of an OEE community of practice as a space for (environmentally) ethical self-stylisation. Bringing these theoretical ideas together is significant because my analysis suggests that the OEE community of practice (re)produces an environmental ethic based on normalised codes of conduct rather than a self-fashioning of an ethical existence as conceived by Foucault. I demonstrate that membership in overlapping communities of practice is influential in participants’ performance of environmental identities and normalising codes of conduct are particularly significant in the physical education/pre-service education communities of practice of which participants are members.
History
Journal
Australian journal of outdoor education
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pagination
28 - 38
Publisher
Outdoor Education Council of Australia
Location
Milton, Qld.
ISSN
1324-1486
Language
eng
Publication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal; C Journal article