Wild Pedagogies

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce emerging outdoor environmental educators to wild pedagogies. We begin by framing the challenges and conceptual ideas from which wild pedagogies arises, including ideas about the wild, wildness, and wilderness; questions about education and the nature of control; and concerns for emerging environmental realities. In using the term wild we seek to challenge dominant cultural ideas particularly in reference to control—of each other, of the more-than-human world and of education. Wild pedagogies rests on a premise that an important part of education can include intentional activities that provide a fertile field for purposeful experience without seeking to control the outcomes or those involved: hence wild pedagogies. The chapter also situates key underpinning ideas of wild pedagogies through the more practical touchstones – intended as provocations and reminders of what we are attempting.