‘Learning through your feet’: Multidisciplinary case studies investigating the role and purpose of outdoor fieldwork in Australian universities

‘Learning through your feet’ has been a key-metaphor amongst geoscientists to describe the learning process in university outdoor fieldwork. Being immersed in the field, and engaged in structured learning activities with others, have been highlighted as crucial components of good outdoor fieldwork that contributes to disciplinebased learning. But research suggests that academics using outdoor fieldwork as a pedagogical tool face an increasing range of constraints and issues. How, in the changing university environment, do academics continue to use outdoor fieldwork, justify its purpose, contend with the apparent issues associated with its use, and contribute to student outcomes? In this presentation, I will describe the initial findings of a multidisciplinary research project that investigates the role of outdoor fieldwork in universities in Australia. My theoretical interpretive framework was based on Giddens’ (1984) Theory of Structuration and Biesta’s (2010) concept of the role of education for qualification, socialisation and subjectification. I investigated outdoor fieldwork academic’s insights into the purpose of outdoor fieldwork, their pedagogical practice and theoretical concepts through ‘walking interviews’ (Lynch & Mannion, 2016) and fieldwork observations. Other sources of data included focus groups with student participants on outdoor fieldwork programs, interviews with senior university administrators and members of the associated professional bodies. These data will enable an interdisciplinary study of the issues facing outdoor fieldwork in higher education at the micro, meso and macro levels (Munge, Thomas, & Heck, 2017)