To Renovate and Make Critical: Outdoor Adventure Education and Justice-Oriented Praxis

Background: What role can outdoor adventure education (OAE) play in response to political, material, and existential crises? While scholars have provided essential critiques of the pedagogies and practices in OAE, there has been limited engagement with the purpose and value of OAE from a critical justice-oriented perspective. This scholarly conceptual contribution proposed that by drawing on anticolonial and critical frameworks, OAE can be reimagined to provide students with important tools to respond to this political-economic moment. Purpose: This conceptual contribution aimed to critically repurpose core elements of OAE pedagogy and practice toward collective justice-oriented action. Method: This manuscript adopted an analytical approach that drew on theories of colonial racial capitalism and liberatory educational pedagogy. Findings: Three core elements of OAE pedagogy were identified and critically renovated within this framework, including the core element of self as reimagined through collectivism and interdependence, the core element of place and nature reimagined as a critical sense of place, and the core element of leadership reimagined as radical relationality. Implications: This conceptual investigation revealed that multiple opportunities for critical renovation of OAE as a form of liberatory education exist. However, these critical renovations require the application of theoretical frameworks.