The water of life: creative non-fiction and lived experience on an interdisciplinary canoe journey on Scotland's River Spey

Enacting a place-responsive research methodology: walking interviews with educators

“…Place: a preeminent concern F o r P e e r R e v i e w O n l y 3 2002Beames, Higgins and Nicol, 2012;Bentsen, Mygind and Randrup, 2009;Brookes, 2002;Harrison, 2010;Higgins and Wattchow, 2012;Mannion, Fenwick and Lynch, 2013;Mygind, 2009;Somerville et al, 2009Somerville et al, , 2011Stewart, 2008;Waite 2011;Wattchow and Brown, 2011).…”

The primacy of place in education in outdoor settings

“…Emerging theorising on place and place-based education is also helpful in recognising the ontological significance of the more-than-human and the importance of a relational view of the social and the ecological (Wattchow et al, 2013). We identify Somerville too as an example of a place-based educator with a strong socio-ecological sensitivity.…”

“…To summarise then, we argue that place-responsive outdoor education involves three aspects: (a) attending to the subjective, personal development and 'inner world' of experience of place (see for example, Higgins and Wattchow, 2013), (b) without losing sight of the need to learn an activity itself-we need to attend to the aesthetic practice-oriented ways of being (or Dewey's 'occupations') (see Quay 2013), yet (c) all the while, attending to the need to attune to the place-based, more-than-human, living and inanimate materials that are also active as agencies in curriculum making (see Rautio 2013) whether these be local or further flung.…”

Educational Relationships: Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and Social Justice

“…It is possible to find such an approach in some practices of 'outdoor education'. Higgins and Wattchow (2013) describe how a canoe journey down the Spey can be the occasion for students coming to attend reflexively to the many ways in which they are connected to the canoes, to the river, to its past, to present inhabitants, and to each other. I suggest that if this approach were more integrated into an understanding of education then the ethics-the social justice-of living a good life together with each other and the rest of the world (benign and malign) would permeate education and give more hope for the future.…”