Peeking Into My Research and PAR

            As the past week has been filled with writing for my research I have been fully engrossed in outdoor education pedagogy and John Dewey’s philosophy of experience. It is not to say that I discredit the importance of Participatory Action Research (PAR), but my focus has been else ware in my writing this week. Instead of writing in response to this form of research I am sharing the preliminary introduction to my research

              Take me to the river where I can learn all day; with seemingly endless miles of river to explore to fill the day with learning and fishing. The journey starts hours before getting to the river, reading river flows, lunar phases and hatch patterns. These events and experiences build upon one another to reach the ultimate experience of catching a fish. On the river a fisherman must take from previous experiences and apply it to the current to catch the elusive species. Reading the water, looking for fish lies and a ripple on the water to indicate where a fish may be hiding become the literacy of the fisherman as they connect and become one with their natural surroundings. The goal is to feel the experience of a fish at the end of the line and to see the beauty of nature, and when the fish has been landed the fisherman can reflect on the previous experiences to understand the true joy of fishing. A fisherman will never forget that feeling of a fish taking the fly and the line run through their fingers until the hook is set as this experience is part of a succession of experiences before. Philosopher John Dewey would attribute this as a quality experience through the line of experiences that reflect towards one another as they “live on in future experiences” (1938, 27). Stepping out of the world of fishing and into the traditional classroom, differences are apparent: trees have been chopped down to frame walls, the leaves have been milled into posters and papers, the rich topsoil is mirrored in the blackboard, while large boulders scattered across the river and neatly ordered into desks as fish have gone through years of evolution to sit at the desks as students. The world that the fisherman sees has become a controlled environment that can be seen as political and students come with the expectation to learn. What has come of the experience? Do the lessons and learning from the day of fishing get turned into lessons that reflect the same quality of experience or do they become single experiences with the intention of a single result? This project looks to utilize the philosophy of experience in pedagogy outside of the normal classroom.

            As I am beginning the writing process with continual research it is interesting to think of the ways in which PAR can play a role in what I am doing. It would not be until I put a curriculum into practices that I could fully engage in PAR, though I am totally open to the idea of this. I think that there is a lot that can be understood in this research and that it would pair well in outdoor education. As students tend to lose voice in research, response towards involvement of outdoor education would offer great insights to the impact that it has. Within marginalized groups, outdoor education could play an important role in student’s lives, giving value to their education as they interact with the natural world.