Adventure Science as Transformative Outdoor Education: An Exploration of Learning

Abstract

In 2017, the Trump administration announced plans to reduce the size of the Bear's Ears National Monument (BENM) in Utah, greatly reducing the monument designated by the Obama administration and reducing protections on land viewed as sacred by multiple indigenous communities in the United States (Creadon & Bergren, 2019). In response to this Executive Order, a team of scientists and endurance athlete participants visited portions of the former BENM in May of 2019 to identify and map areas of cultural interest to help build a case for why and where the BENM’s original boundaries should be preserved. Through the lens of transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 2000, 2003), we sought to understand what and how learning occurred on this expedition to BENM. As there have been numerous calls to implement citizen science into higher education settings (Borrell et al., 2016; Rosenberger & Aukema, 2016) and to incorporate more outdoor education in the higher education classroom, these findings will provide insight into how content learning occurs through citizen science as outdoor education.