Untrodden Paths: A Critical Conversation about Wilder Places in Outdoor Education

This paper asks, what is the outdoors, and challenges conceptions of the role the outdoors play in education. It critically examines why a better understanding of the outdoors is important to outdoor education, how wilder places are essential to education, and how learning generated from these places can be translated into sustainable thinking and action. The enquiry is presented as a discussion between three experienced outdoor educators on international understandings of the outdoors and wilderness. In particular, they explore whether taking students to wilder places supports myth-making in uncritical ways, or whether experiencing these places reconnects them with nature, modifies their worldview, and in turn brings important aspects of the wild into their decision making about how they wish to live on the planet.