ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part focuses on Western Europe, particularly the UK and Scandinavia, although also has a more international reach in Erik Backman's consideration of the training of teachers and in place-responsive teaching. It explores the unique teaching and learning in outdoor studies emanating from direct contact with the natural environment. The part examines the important place of fieldwork and expeditions in providing the interface of direct experience with the environment, real and virtual. It provides detailed and extensive history of outdoor education and outdoor learning in the UK, and voices concerns about its development in the 1990s after the introduction of the Education Reform Act in 1988, construed in outdoor pedagogical terms as the 'death of fun'. The part explores the processes and implications of privatisation and commercialisation on outdoor learning globally following key papers discussing outdoor adventure as 'recreational capitalism'.
