CHAPTER ELEVEN VALUES IN ADVENTURE EDUCATION HAPPY AND WISE THROUGH HANDS-ON LEARNING Pete Allison, Malcolm Thorburn, John Telford and Aaron Marshall INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we use some sharp thinking from the past to consider possibilities for the future. Essentially, we explore values and how they impact on adventure education. You might think that values have little to do with adventure education, but we hope that by the end of this chapter you will have changed your mind. We suggest that without under- standing the role of values, at least at a cursory level, adventure education is destined to be an ill-informed enterprise. We also suggest that one of the main ways to make the most of adventure education opportunities is to adopt a constructivist approach to learning. We explore some of the claims regarding aims and objectives that are often associated with such an approach. This is where the sharp thinking from the past comes into play. Using three categories devised by Aristotle, we propose that while adventure education might be con- cerned with skill development (techne), learning about the environment, climate change, or other related purposes, such as health and wellbeing (episteme), the overarching conception of adventure education that we endorse is the development of practical wisdom (phronesis). Finally, we offer suggestions for how you might incorporate this into learners’ adventure education experiences. VALUES Values are inherent in the choices we make, and we all have to make choices in our lives every day. Built on beliefs, and bearing significant emotional attachment, values play a crucial role in shaping our approach to decision-making. Some choices we face are small, such as what to eat, while others are larger, such as what kind of job we want to have. A large part of growing up and becoming an active member of society involves developing our abilities to make value-driven choices – and preferably ‘good’ choices. To complicate matters, some large choices, prior to reflection, may appear small – and vice versa. For instance, deciding what to eat can be a big choice as it demonstrates specific values about our bodies, others and the environment. Asking ourselves if the food is good for us, from 206 Pete Allison et al. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 T&F PROOFS. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. Adventure-01-p.qxd 26/1/11 09:27 Page 206