Mr Tony Keeble1
1Outdoor School DET Victoria
The purpose of this presentation is to outline two recent papers and some initial findings from a PhD research that looks at the role outdoor education has on social capital.
The issues explored include the notion that outdoor education has a bright future in mainstream education, especially when that future involves the teaching of communication skills, relationship skills, group processing skills, networking skills and leadership.
Furthermore the presentation will briefly explore recent studies looking at the outcomes of residential outdoor schools in the UK and Victoria. The studies show a marked increase in educational attainment for students who have structured and meaningful outdoor education curriculum delivered. The importance of this is that Governments can no longer ignore this information in educational policy documents.
Outdoor education is not dead, it has a new beginning!
Biography:
Tony Keeble is a PhD candidate with Federation University. He is also the Principal Of Outdoor School, a Victorian department of education school. Tony’s research interest include exploring the ideas that outdoor education can be explained through a social framework lens. Tony’s PhD research looks at the role outdoor education can play in developing social capital amongst cohorts of year 9 students from communities in rural Victoria.