The Problems of Utilizing ‘Direct Experience’ in Geography Education

Abstract

Many fieldtrips are designed so that students might have direct experience of ‘the landscape’ and/or ‘the people’. But as Scott (1992 Scott J 1992 Experience Butler J Scott JW Feminists Theorize the Political 22 40 New York Routledge [Google Scholar]) warns, experience of ‘the real world’ is never transparent and unmediated. It is with this central idea in mind that the author (re)examines the epistemology of two human geography fieldtrips that concerned recent migrants to New Zealand in order to show how they trade on a logocentric essentializing epistemology. Scott's (1992 Scott J 1992 Experience Butler J Scott JW Feminists Theorize the Political 22 40 New York Routledge [Google Scholar]) critique of experience forms the central theoretical framework of the article. The author draws on this framework to review the geographic education literature concerning the role of experience; to describe the pedagogical intentions of the lecturers running the two human geography fieldtrips; to analyse data from interviews with students conducted some months after the fieldtrips had taken place; and to claim that a logocentric essentializing epistemology is evident in the design and effects of the fieldtrips and that this is flawed theoretically, practically and ethically.