Fostering transformative learning: a phenomenological study into the lived experience of reflection and transformation in adventure education

This phenomenological and interpretive study presents stories of the lived teaching and learning experiences of participants on adventure programmes in Singapore. Although learning in adventure education has been said to be transformational and that outdoor leaders play a crucial role in promoting such learning, there has been little empirical research into the lived experiences of leaders and learners that might provide pedagogical insights into how these transformations take place. The process of adventure learning as a phenomenon has largely assumed to be mysterious, and has been called the adventure education ‘black box’ (Ewert, 1983). Adventure experiences are presumed to be able to lead to transformative-like learning, however no pedagogy for transformative learning on empirical evidence has yet been proposed. Therefore, this study was guided by the following research question: How do the lived experiences of participants and outdoor leaders lead to understanding and promoting transformative learning in adventure education? The study was conducted in two parts. First it critiqued adventure education discourses and demonstrated how in theory and in practice, adventure education has neglected the potential of teaching and learning in three ways: (1) through the misunderstood meaning of ‘experience’; (2) through the undermined role of ‘reflection’ in adventure learning; and (3) through an erasure of the role of outdoor leaders due to the promotion of a universalised adventure education paradigm. Consequently, the transdisciplinary literature of teaching and learning were critiqued through an examination of the existential ground (van Manen, 1990) upon which human experiences are unavoidably ‘lived’. This critique was coupled with a focused review of reflection and transformative learning scholarship to provide a conceptual framework that guided data collection and interpretation in the second phase of the study. Second, the reflective writings of 61 participants enrolled in three separate adventure programmes were reviewed. The courses ranged from 5 to 21 days in duration. Ten participants were selected and interviewed, while four outdoor leaders responsible for the conduct of the adventure programmes were also interviewed to provide perspectives of their own teaching and learning experiences. The written and oral data interpreted produced 14 biographical case studies of people’s responses to adventure experiences. These cases were combined and thematised, as guided by the conceptual framework established earlier, to present a collective lived experience of adventure education in using narrative inquiry and hermeneutics, specifically through stories and storytelling. The resulting research text (van Manen, 1990) is presented as a fictional novella, Tile Island, as part of this thesis to illuminate the “meaning, structure and essence of lived experience(s)” (Patton, 2002, p. 104) of the participants and leaders in adventure education. Revealing the adventure education ‘black box’ through fictional representation uncovers, discovers, freezes, creates or re-imagines meaning and articulation of subsequent knowing. Reflection from the narratives found support to argue for the reinterpretation of meaning inherent within the fundamental constructs of adventure education. The plausible insights also exposed the significance of engaging learners holistically in lived body, lived relation, lived space and time, and lived stories so as to encourage reflection and transformative learning in adventure education. This study contributes, from an empirical basis, insights into the adventure education phenomenon and an understanding of limitations and possibilities of a change-responsive pedagogy of adventure education. In addition, the demonstration of the use of a very novel approach to methodology and (re)presentation of data/findings adds to the small, but increasing, number of studies using emergent methodologies in adventure education discourses. The key aim of such studies is surely to reveal for pedagogical consideration the previously hidden or mysterious inner-world of human subjectivity.