Nurturing female outdoor educators : a call for increased diversity in outdoor education in precarious times

This chapter examines the need to nurture female outdoor educators so that they too can contribute to new imagining of education for sustainability in these precarious times. Various researchers such as Cochran-Smith (2005), Futrell (2008), Gale (2006) and Westheimer (2008) have espoused a globalised view of best teacher preparation practice and in particular, the need to attract a variety of individuals with diverse backgrounds to the teaching profession. In this chapter, I draw from a cultural nature theoretical foundation (Rogoff, 2003) and am informed by queer theory, contemporary feminist theory, and post-millennial feminist theory (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008; McNeil, 2010; Rustom Jagose, 1996). With these theoretical lenses I aim to scrutinise current complexities of practice in the outdoor education profession. A contemporary analysis of the study involves a “reorientation of feminist thinking and a strikingly affirmative phase in feminist theory” (McNeil, 2010, p. 428, in an attempt to provide ways forward for the outdoor education profession (Rasmussen, 2009). The outdoor education profession faces challenges like retaining a diverse teacher population while also trying to implement a complex new curriculum. Presently in Australia, all states are implementing a national curriculum for the first time. The new Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA, n.d.) require teachers to implement sustainability outcomes as cross-curricular priority.