ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on John Dewey's pragmatism to outline an account of experience for outdoor studies, crafted from Martin Heidegger's phenomenology. Scholars in outdoor studies have long engaged with the notion of experience in education. Going to a level deeper requires development of 'a coherent theory of experience' or a 'sound philosophy of experience' that illuminates 'Education itself' rather than some -ism of education. Two important factors concerning the connection Dewey draws between growth and education are significant for outdoor studies: growth of further experience requires more than just specialisation in one or other ways of being and 'further experience' Dewey speaks of is not the remote future of adult life. A major contribution Dewey makes to a philosophy of experience is to insist that thinking is also experience: 'reflective experience'. Based on Dewey's claims, aesthetic experience is a crucial mode of experience to grasp. Understanding aesthetic experience, however, is more difficult than understanding reflective experience.
