ABSTRACT

Quay re-interprets John Dewey’s concept of experience in the context of his works related to the problems of education (Dewey, 1938). While many discipline-orientated discourses – for example mathematics education, science education and history education – emphasise content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge as the major focus, outdoor education has striven to comprehend and work educationally with the experiences of the participants – in outdoor education, the experiences of participants encompass both pedagogy and content. Significant among the theorists informing such discussion is educational philosopher John Dewey. Quay’s aim in this paper is to explore Dewey’s theoretical position regarding experience and education in more detail, drawing on the interpretation of Dewey’s philosophy of education argued by another educational philosopher, RS Peters (1977), in the edited book John Dewey Reconsidered. Peters’ positive account of the connection Dewey makes between experience and education is of high quality. However, Peters also takes issue with aspects of Dewey’s philosophy, opening the door to further debate. Quay provides a summarised version of Peters’ positive account and then explores his criticisms. This enables the introduction of a more coherent view of Dewey’s philosophy, one which Dewey himself struggled to clearly articulate, even though it was his aim to express ‘a coherent theory of experience’. This perspective brings Dewey’s understanding of aesthetic experience, which Peters overlooked, into functional relation with his work in logic, or reflective experience. Such an interpretation offers to outdoor educators a broad conceptualisation of experiential learning which may further inform various understandings of pedagogical practice.