Heutagogy and outdoor learning: Designing postgraduate studies that support self-determined learners

In this chapter, Colin Wood evaluates how outdoor learning can be recognised within the formal structures of postgraduate study. The chapter explores the relationship between heutagogy (self-directed learning) and outdoor learning. Through interviews with former students, it considers how the diversity and intensity of experiences in the outdoors can be incorporated into formal structures of study in ways that support self-determined learning. The evaluation draws on long experience of leading a distance-learning programme in outdoor education and identifies tensions between academic structures (and norms) and the expectations of learners. In response, the work presents ways that the design of postgraduate study can support learners to develop an advanced understanding of their field and the skills of critical reflection. The chapter argues that the concept of heutagogy provides a strong pedagogic rationale for postgraduate study in its recognition of the agency of the learner, and that the formal structures of postgraduate study can be used to scaffold and validate the learners’ explorations of the liminal spaces between personal experience in the outdoors and academic theory.