ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the twin discourses of adventure and environmental education, collectively known as outdoor education, and how they reflect the wider social trends of the twentieth century. It explores whether there are trends that parallel wider concerns in society about a sustainable future or whether other social trends remain dominant. The chapter highlights two strong strands of practice of outdoor education, adventure and environment. Adventures require a ‘hostile’ space in which adolescents can develop skills, discover their power and explore their emerging identities in the arenas of mountains, rivers, seas and caves. Education for sustainability is a movement that has impacted on many subjects and in many countries since the United Nations Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. J. Quay and J. Seaman describe just such a case study from the United States in which an environmental education initiative failed to gain traction in the school curriculum.
