Opportunities for belonging and becoming: using outdoor learning programmes with adolescent students

Purpose This study aims to explore two outdoor education programmes for adolescent students. In Australia, week-long residential camps cater for entire cohorts of students. In England, tailored, small-group provision caters for students excluded from mainstream schooling. This paper recounts how each programme approaches issues of educational equality and inclusion, firstly through design and secondly through delivery. It offers critical hope, through examining possibilities for belonging and becoming, as well as using these findings to critique the formal education system, to which such alternative education is juxtaposed. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyses semi-structured interviews with key educators from each setting who played a sustained role in designing and delivering their programme. The author applies grounded theory techniques, including free-writing, memoing, diagramming and inductive coding, to draw out emergent themes from these interviews. Findings Despite the distinct context, different design structures, scales and priorities, educator reflections on the enactment of both programmes reveal the emergence of opportunities for belonging and becoming. The author uses lenses of critical ecopedagogy and identity constitution, to probe how these possibilities for belonging and community-building, and for reengagement and identity reconstitution, develop and resound through both programmes. This provides possibilities for addressing educational marginalisation and inequality. Originality/value Outdoor education is less used and under-researched, with adolescent students. The author argues the possibilities for belonging and becoming here contribute to debates around quality education, shedding light on flaws within neoliberal education provision. The author argues, such sites of alternative education enrich and counter aspects of education they are seen as alternative to, offering hope.