Miss Ella Sutton

Research interests

• Environmental education for outdoor instructors
• Environmental literacy development in the outdoor adventure industry
• Citizen science in outdoor adventure activities
• Developing cognitive and psychological connections to nature
• Sustainability of the outdoor adventure industry

Current research

Ella’s PhD is looking at how to create an environmental literacy development course for outdoor instructors. The research has settled on using a framework for pedagogic content knowledge to address the relationship between what is being taught (the content) and how it is being taught (the pedagogy). The content for environmental literacy development focuses on knowledge, attitudes, competencies, and behaviours. To understand and facilitate development through these areas the course will look at citizen science and nature connectedness activities, experiential facilitation, and participant responses.

The next stage of the project involves refining the course through participatory research with industry experts. Once a course has been finalised it will be trialled and tested with outdoor instructors to see if it increases their own belief in ability to teach about the environment, their understanding of environmental literacy and their ability to adapt different facilitation styles to engage different group participants in the environment.