Setting a place at the table: Social justice research in outdoor experiential education

Imagine outdoor experiential education research as a huge banquet table with many places set for those who wish to dine. Critical theory implores us to consider who has not been invited to the table and why their invitation has been delayed or lost. Feminist theory entreats that we notice the unequal relations of power between those who partake in the meal and who is at the head of the table. Scarcity thinking says there are only a limited number of places at the table, unconscious of the fact that we could potentially add more table leaves to make a bigger table or ask those who have already eaten to relinquish their places. This metaphor of the banquet table expresses to many people the state of research in outdoor experiential education today.

This article will attempt to set a place at the table of experiential education research for social justice research; namely, studies that are founded in generating rather than testing theory, in emancipatory outcomes, and in questioning traditional paradigms of inquiry. Currently, reconceptualizations of how knowledge is generated have inundated the social science and education research arenas. Thinking is moving from the view of knowledge as found to knowledge as constructed. At the same time, scholars have begun to recognize that the production of knowledge has excluded members of oppressed groups (Kirby & McKenna, 1989). Infusing new thinking into orthodox conceptions of outdoor experiential education research will transform the research process, allowing us to set a place at the table for research that is socially just.

The Importance of Social justice in the Outdoor Experiential Education Field

Rapid changes in racial demographics, the role of women in society, and the class structure in the United States have brought social justice issues into the national dialogue more so than ever before. Contemporary experiential education practitioners, faced with this social upheaval in society, have called for attention to social justice in experiential education (Kielsmeier, 1989; MacArthur, 1987; Meyer, 1994; Warren, 1998a; Warren, 1998b).

Although it is beyond the scope of this discussion to provide complete justification for social justice in the outdoor adventure field, the promotion of education for social change has been championed by John Dewey (Dewey, 1916; Glazer, 1997) and Kurt Hahn (Flavin, 1996; Rohrs & Tunstall-Behrens, 1970). Direct experience in a social milieu "is the fundamental method of social progress and reform" (Dewey, 1959, p. 30). Hahn's beliefs were based on the philosophy of Plato, who taught that a human being cannot achieve perfection without creating a just society (James, 1995b). Like Dewey, Hahn put forth that an ultimate aim of education was the nurturance of civic responsibility, which Hahn concluded was manifested in students' defense of human decency and acts of compassion (James, 1995a). If the field of outdoor experiential education is to follow the dictums for social justice espoused by Dewey and Hahn, then research, in concert with practice, must guide practitioners and programmers to understand issues of social oppression in the outdoor adventure field.

What is Social Justice Research?

Like outdoor experiential education, social justice research is experiential by nature as it deals with the experiences of people on intrapersonal (individual), interpersonal, organizational, and societal levels. In social justice research, the experience of both oppression and emancipation is examined in detail. Social justice research must constantly seek to reveal and examine privilege and power relations as a part of a process by which oppression is not only described, but also challenged (Harding, 1987). As a result, social justice research is considered, by definition, action research with its fundamental goal to describe, explain, and eliminate oppressive conditions that contribute to social injustice.

Social justice research allows those who are considered "on the margins" to participate both as subjects and producers of knowledge. Because knowledge in a field is created by discourse of those involved, "to understand the positionality of the knowledge, it is essential to examine who belongs to that community. Because a discourse community cannot encompass all perspectives, the production of knowledge is influenced by omissions" (Hillis, 1996, p. 279). A goal of social justice research, therefore, is to rectify these omissions which stem from social privilege by a deliberate attempt to include underrepresented voices in the process.

The doctoral research by both authors represents an attempt to bring diverse voices and typically marginalized ideas into the mainstream discourse of outdoor leadership. Loeffler (1995) studied the career path of women in outdoor leadership. She found a distinct disparity between men and women in advancement in the outdoor adventure profession, and made recommendations for enhancing women's career development in outdoor leadership. Warren (1999) examined race, gender, and class-sensitive outdoor leadership. As a result of her study, Warren identified a framework of entrenched paradigms that prevent social justice, and suggested directions for training outdoor instructors, encouraging multicultural organizational development, and utilizing alternative paradigms of practice in the outdoor experiential education field.

A closer look at the methods, theoretical design, and analyses in the authors' studies illustrates some unique factors that might influence the direction of research in the field of outdoor experiential education. We will draw from examples in our own research and the current literature on alternative research paradigms to demonstrate the potential for socially just, outdoor experiential education research to open up exciting new horizons.

The Place of Social Justice Research in Outdoor Experiential Education

Henderson (1993) points out, "If experiential education is only to address the dominant world of primarily white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated males, then the positivist paradigm will do" (pg. 53). Although there has been a call for new paradigms of research in the outdoor experiential education field (Chenery, 1987; Henderson, 1993; Rowley, 1987), the traditional positivistic paradigm is still considered the preferable research modality (Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997). One author of this article, in seeking funding for her study within the outdoor adventure field, was told by an adventure program research director that the use of qualitative methodology was outside the generally accepted methods of their research programs.

Certainly social justice research could be done using positivist frameworks and the results would be useful to the field. For example, a survey to determine the effectiveness of outreach to women and people of color could give information about the increase or decrease of these populations in programs or as staff. Yet missing from this study is a concerted effort to find out the why behind the trends and to discover how to make changes leading to more socially just practice in our programs and management efforts.

Humberstone (1996) posits that rigid reliance on empirical outdoor adventure research is problematic since the field is predicated on values and meanings. She suggests,

This taken for granted privileging of forms of empiricism in outdoor education research neglects and perhaps rejects questions around values and meanings in research. Thus this strict adherence to positivistic paradigms creates a barrier to our ability to understand and make sense of the outdoor experience. (p. 50)

The goal of the type of social justice research we propose as valuable to the field rests in theory generation and making meaning of phenomena rather than confirmation of a predetermined hypothesis. Because research into social justice issues often requires the study of human qualities and human interactions, social justice research demands frameworks and methods that search for multiple and different versions of truth. The field of outdoor experiential education must give up its historic bias for the positivist paradigm and consider the interpretive paradigm as an additional way to bring more people, ideas, and methods to the research table.

The Transformation of the Researcher / Practitioner Relationship

Another goal of social justice research in outdoor experiential education, made implicit by definition, is to create emancipatory practice in the field. Lather (1991) calls this catalytic validity, which means that the research is judged not only on standard measures of validity but also by the change it creates in the real world of praxis. For instance, social justice research, which eschews a maintenance of distance between researcher and subjects, offers the potential to close the researcher/practitioner gap identified by Ewert (1995) by allowing researchers to change their teaching, conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and modes of exchange through sustained interactivity with practitioners (Huberman, 1999).

The following stories by the authors are examples of how social justice research can be an emancipatory experience, transforming both the researchers who practice it and the subjects who participate in it.

Karen

From my own experience in conducting social justice research, I experienced major conceptual shifts in my teaching of outdoor leadership to include social justice issues as an integral part of the curriculum. My sustained interactivity through visits to outdoor programs and interviews with outdoor experiential educators showed me the passion practitioners in the field have for designing, teaching, and leading socially just programs. Experiencing a profound call for social justice in the outdoor adventure field prompted me to design and teach a course on social justice in outdoor experiential education at my home institution as well as lead professional social justice workshops for outdoor leader training programs.

The cooperative nature of my research resulted in an attempt to share power and to have the investigation benefit the respondents and programs. Anderson (1993) relates that her interview subjects found that talking about their personal lives was beneficial to their continued development. Similarly, remarks by subjects in my study have shown that their level of thinking about their own social justice practice and their commitment to action has been heightened by the inquiry they experienced. I considered interviewees and colleagues at programs visited to be co-researchers who were interested in finding the truth about social justice practice. In the spirit of collaboration, I would follow-up with individuals in the study about points that emerged from the data that needed more clarity, greater depth, or affirmation. T.A.

As a researcher, I have chosen to situate myself in both the personal and political realms of my research questions and, as a result, conducting the research changed and transformed me. In the personal realm, I gained a greater autobiographical understanding by more fully grasping my process of choosing a career and becoming an outdoor leader. I was able to critically reflect on the constraints that I had successfully negotiated as well as the constraints that I still struggle with. Through the research process, I was able to appreciate the multitude of forces that shaped my development as an outdoor leader.

In the political realm, I had a deep commitment to social change and to empowerment of the subjects of my research. I, like Gottfried (1996), believe that research should be emancipatory and should provide the research subjects with a greater grasp of how their lives are influenced by the larger society. Many of the research participants in my study communicated with me after the research was completed to share how participating in the study changed them. Many communicated a sense of relief and joy at sharing their career histories with me. The interview and subsequent interactions provided an opportunity for reflection and in some cases, a commitment or re-commitment to activism in their workplaces. The research provided an opportunity for the women to share their life stories including their struggles, frustration, fear, and anger as well as their dreams, goals, and moments of joy. Each woman gained the knowledge that she was not alone in her journey and that she had companions along the way.

Because traditional research objectifies when it is used for researcher gain rather than for participant gain, social justice research in outdoor experiential education must involve participants as co-researchers, as integral partners in the research, and as benefactors of the research (Gorelick, 1996). The practice of using study subjects as co-researchers is predicated on a deep respect for the capacities of those on the margins of society (Lather, 1991), and it is transformative of the relationship between the researcher and the researched.

Metaphorically, then, research in outdoor experiential education stands at a fork in the trail. Social justice research represents the route not previously taken and an exciting new direction for research in this field. It offers research philosophies and methodologies that have great potential to create deeper understandings of the underlying processes and dynamics of outdoor experiential education.

The Place of the Researcher in Social Justice Research

Given the primacy of experience in social justice work, it is necessary to locate the researcher in the social context surrounding the study. Speaking about adventure education research, Humberstone (1990) notes, "Any researcher is an integral part of the phenomena which she/he explores and cannot easily or morally be erased from the research process" (p. 201).

Social justice research is conducted, analyzed, and interpreted through the lens of the researcher's world view, complete with personal biases and motivations. Yet objectivity and distance (if they could even be achieved) are not actually an advantage in this type of research. A researcher's engagement in social justice work offers access to knowledge and sensitizing advantages not available to a disinterested researcher. "Research from the margins is best accomplished by those who live on the margins" (Kirby & McKenna, 1989, p. 105).

However, attempts must be made to acknowledge the distorting effects of personal bias and familiarity with the subject or research context. According to Gottfried (1996), "Research is an inherently political process which is structured in hierarchies of power among researchers, between researchers, between sponsors of research and researchers, and between researchers and the subjects of their research" (p.14). As most research involves the researcher having more power than the researched, questions of power and control must be addressed in all research projects from initial development through data collection, analysis, and dissemination (Muzychka, Poulin, Cottrell, Miedema, & Roberts, 1996). Social justice research demands that researchers be very clear about their position, privilege, and power that accompany the research process. Specifically, researchers must be aware of their social identity, and name how positions of power and privilege with respect to ability, age, class, culture, ethnicity, family status, gender, income, language, location, race, and sexual orientation influence the research process (Muzychka et al., 1996). Table 1 presents examples of foundation questions to direct research project planning.

Anderson (1993) asserts that awareness of race, class, and gender must be present in the research process and the analysis of data.

[W]e should develop research practices that acknowledge and take as central the class, race, and gender relations in which researchers and research subjects are situated. At the same time, we should question assumptions that the knower is the ultimate authority on the lives of those whom she or he studies. We should not assume that white scholars are unable to generate research with people of color as research subjects, but we must be aware that to do so, white scholars must work in ways that acknowledge and challenge white privilege and question how such privilege may shape research experiences. (p. 51)

In our own cases, white privilege allowed us access to many situations that were instrumental in conducting our research. Primarily, our advancement in the field of outdoor experiential education has been conditional on white privilege opening doors of opportunity that people of color have not historically been granted in the outdoor field. In interviewing and observing people of color, we were reminded often of the outsiders status we had as practitioners who had not shared the same challenges based on race and ethnicity. Roberts (1996) explains this phenomenon in her writing about women of color in experiential education.

Through my own research efforts and conversations with numerous professionals, I've learned that it is a common viewpoint that the special insight of minority group scholars (insiders) renders them best qualified to obtain information from minority communities. I am not suggesting that white professionals should not study racial minorities, but I do think that minority scholars have both empirical and methodological advantages. The most important one is that the "lenses" through which they see social reality may allow minority scholars to ask questions and gather information that others could not. (p. 289)

Self-corrective techniques by the researcher can create consciousness of the obscured effects of social biases that stem from either the oblivious nature of privilege or the desensitizing lens of internalized oppression. During the course of her doctoral study, one researcher used a journal as an instrument of critical self-reflection to record ideas, speculations, and biases that came to light as the study progressed. Keeping track of "conceptual baggage" (Kirby & McKenna, 1989) allowed her to interact with her experience of privilege and marginality in ways that increased understanding of ideas that emerged in the research project.

The authors' stories of their place in the research study provide examples of the importance of self-location.

T.A.

As a social justice researcher, my aim is to collect, reflect on, and analyze the experiences/lives of those who participate in the research. Operating out of the interpretative paradigm, I become the research instrument. The data collected from the subjects flow through me - I cannot separate my experience of the data from the data themselves, nor do I wish to, nor do I think it is possible to do so. There is no objective way to study the experience of social justice. The interactions of multitudes of factors are very complex and I must resist the temptation to simplify and objectify either my subjects or the data.

It is critical for me to understand where I am situated at any point in the research process. I can operate from a position of privilege, a position of neutrality, or a position of marginality depending on my research questions and of whom I am asking them. By definition, conducting social justice research impels me to be very clear about my position and the dynamics of power that accompany these positions.

When I conducted my doctoral research, I frequently shared my various identities and positions (i.e., white, Canadian, woman, raised working class, graduate student, outdoor leader) with the research subjects as a way of naming and situating myself within the context of our research relationship. Additionally, throughout the research process, I used a reflective writing process to assist in my understanding of how my identities, positions of power, and past experiences might influence the research. In hindsight, I now wish I had shared more information about my "collection of subjectivities" in publications about the research, metaphorically hanging the collection on a laundry line for others to see and acknowledge when they read my interpretation of the subjects' realities.

Karen

During my study, it was imperative that I remained sensitive to the positions of privilege and marginality that I as a researcher occupied in conducting my research. My own white privilege opened doors to many situations that were advantageous in collecting the data. Additionally, in interviewing practitioners of color, I sometimes felt that my own lack of direct experience with racism in the field was a barrier to complete understanding of their stories. My attempts to resolve my outsider status with regard to white privilege included developing a collaborative approach to inquiry with respondents, and extensive engagement in self-reflection and analysis. I also used my intuitive knowledge of oppression gained from my own situations of marginality as a woman, a raised working-class person, a lesbian, and a mother in the outdoor experiential education field to heighten my comprehension of the issues involved.

Conclusion

Research designs that risk experimentation promise to extend emancipatory theory and practice. In order to advance social justice research in the field of outdoor experiential education, we must recognize its critical importance in the management and delivery of programs, the training of staff, and the experience of participants. Outdoor experiential education has great potential to be a liberating experience. Therefore, social justice research must take its place in the mainstream of outdoor experiential education research because it will provide the imperatives for change within individuals, our organizations, and the world as a whole.

In future research, the intersection of oppressions must be investigated as the overlapping dimensions of inequity are still unclear in the field. Other challenges to be addressed in social justice research include the absence of developed research methods, and the tendency toward essentialism, which involves generalizing about an oppressed group's experience. Besides the truth-distorting effects of privilege previously mentioned, internalized oppression may also affect the responses of people from marginalized groups. These challenges call for bold new directions in research in the outdoor field. Those with access to research power must share this power with the people who have traditionally been excluded to guarantee that the state of social justice in outdoor experiential education continues to deepen and does not run the risk of complacency. Along with diversifying the researchers, it is imperative to diversify the settings, situations, and methodologies that are used when conducting such research. A rich mosaic of understandings of social justice in outdoor experiential education will ensure that there are ample place settings at the research table for diverse researchers, philosophies, and methodologies.

Notes

We use the term outsider and insider to denote location with respect to experience. For example, as white females we consider ourselves outsiders to the direct experience of people of color and an insider to women's experience. This use differs from other scholars (e.g.

Collins, 1986; Goldberger,Tarule, Clinchy, & Belenky, 1996) who use the terms to denote that access to social privilege defines an insider and lack of privilege an outsider.

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Karen Warren, PhD, teaches in the Outdoors Program/ Recreational Athletics at Hampshire College. She can be contacted at: Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, 01002, email: kwCC@hampshire.edu.

TA. Loeffler, PhD, teaches in the School of Physical Education and Athletics at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She can be contacted at: Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1C 557, email: tloeffe@morgan.ucs.mun.ca.

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