Experiencing Beach in Australia: Study Abroad Students' Perspectives

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The current “Australian-<jats:italic>ness</jats:italic>” of outdoor environmental education is an evolving “set” of socio-cultural constructions. These constructions can be interpreted within the circumstances of an empirical study of tertiary study abroad students' participation in an undergraduate semester long unit “Experiencing the Australian Landscape” (EAL) as an ambivalent mixture of belonging and beach, or solidity and fuidity. This ambivalence imparts various meanings within and about the Australian context of beach as a “place”. The study is based on an interpretive mixed method ethnographic and phenomenological small-scale case study. It fnds that the beach experience is infuenced by various social discourses, such as neocolonialism, individualism and mobility. Participants experienced the beach in a fuid sense of non-belonging, despite the EAL intention of fostering a place-responsive pedagogy. In order to understand their experience and its alleged link to an enhanced environmental awareness, an embodied dialectic descriptive interpretation of place experience is suggested.</jats:p>

Children and Young People's Experience of the Natural World: Teachers' Perceptions and Observations

“…In a study of outdoor recreation, Lisberg-Jensen and Oius (2008) found that the implicit norms and values of outdoor recreation that were used as means for extra-Scandinavian migrants to integrate into Swedish society were problematic. Nakagawa & Payne (2011) discuss the problems of belonging and the cultural construction of place identity in their study of international students' experience of ‘the beach’ in Victoria. The experiences of the students were not similar to the initial perceptions of the iconic view of ‘the beach’.…”

Toward sustainable educational travel

“…Tarrant & Lyons's (2012) study of the effect of short-term study abroad experiences on environmental citizenship found provisionally that location does influence students' environmental citizenship. Nakagawa and Payne (2011) found that place and sense of place were key components in study abroad students' experiences, and thus they advocate a place-responsive pedagogy/environmental education that considers the implications of sites on student experiences of and in a place. Dvorak et al (2011, p. 151) recommend learning from communities and individuals "deeply engaged in environmental work .…”

WWOOF Ecopedagogy: Linking ‘Doing’ to ‘Learning’

“…In environmental education, particularly for pedagogies that prioritise eco-social justice such as land-based education, a concern was expressed that potentially ‘the nuances of place become reduced to objects of experiential or visual consumption’ (McKenzie & Bieler, 2016, p. 77). A similar concern has been expressed for international Study Abroad students who studied in a tertiary outdoor environmental education unit in Australia (Nakagawa & Payne, 2011). In order to lessen the ‘gaze’ effect and related consumerism, ‘locally’ contextualised knowledge and perspectives must be ‘critically’ inserted into the learners’ experience (Gruenewald, 2013).…”