Critical Consciousness in High School Outdoor and Experiential Education

• In Event: Environmental Education as Site of Critical Inquiry

Abstract

Outdoor education staff involved in delivering outdoor education programming are often predominantly white. High school near-peer mentors, in contrast, are racially and ethnically diverse, and play important near-peer mentoring roles with younger students. This paper explores the development of critical consciousness in racially diverse high school students within the context of outdoor experiential environmental education. We ask: what is it about the outdoor school experience for diverse high school students that is unique and shapes the development of critical consciousness?

Using data from a larger critical ethnographic mixed-methods study and critical consciousness as a theoretical framework, we highlight the way in which outdoor school programming elements and outcomes associated with equity, diversity, access, and inclusion for high school student leaders help them develop critical consciousness. We pay careful attention to the ways in which our theoretical groundings shaped our respective approaches to research design. We understand that this approach to conducting ethnography serves a political purpose, for us, our purpose is grounded in a need to inform more culturally responsive approaches to outdoor education in our state, influencing the ways in which programs rethink their formal and non-formal curriculum and pedagogy for all of the students involved. “Conducting critical ethnography means committing to addressing social injustice and inequality through the research process,” (Given, 2008, p.3) and we do so thoughtfully, knowing that there is much work to be done to dismantle the power structures that shape approaches to education that are not just or equitable.

Drawing on Watts, Diemer, and Voights’s (2011) reconceptualization of Paulo Friere’s “critical consciousness,” we examined, through critical mixed methods ethnography, the elements of OEE that contribute to the development of critical equity consciousness (CEC) in high school near-peer mentors, particularly critical reflection (or critical social analysis), political efficacy (or sense of agency), and critical action.
The intentional development of training and curriculum that is rooted in social justice education for high school leaders help facilitate the development of critical equity consciousness. Staff facilitation of dialogue about equity issues, ongoing support for high school students related to the awareness, skills and behaviors relative to social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion also contribute to the development of critical equity consciousness in high school students. High school leaders, a diverse group of students, may make significant contributions to OEE programs in the areas of equity, diversity, access, and inclusion. The expression and development of CEC was observed in HSLs in the particular ways they were able to critically reflect on political and sociocultural phenomena being discussed in their training. As well, CEC was reflected in HSLs’ sense of agency in how they saw themselves in relation to political agency to make changes related to the environment (environmental attitudes and beliefs). HSLs saw themselves as agents of change with regard to critical action around equity and inclusion in the outdoor education programs with which they were involved.

Authors

• Steven Braun, Oregon State University

• Daniel Prince, Friends of Outdoor School

• Spirit Brooks, Oregon State University