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Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Assessing outdoor and environmental education threshold concepts in Australian universities
Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, Vol.28, pp.245-267
2025
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
Communicating tertiary graduate skills and knowledge to employers is a contemporary issue in Australian outdoor education. Threshold concepts have been proposed as a positive way forward to a shared understanding between Higher Education (HE) professionals, students, graduates, employers, and other outdoor education stakeholders. While threshold concepts can offer a curriculum development framework that highlights the graduate capabilities of an HE outdoor educator, they do not specify how these concepts are assessed. In this paper, we explore the assessment of threshold concepts in HE degrees and then examine current assessment practices in HE outdoor education degrees. We highlight selected literature on assessing outdoor education in HE and then explore how other professions assess threshold concepts. Specific professions included have (a) identified threshold concepts and (b) considered the ability to practice upon graduation, as this has the most significant alignment with the professional role of an outdoor educator. We then describe current outdoor education HE assessment practices at selected Australian universities, highlighting the breadth and range of assessment methods incorporated in existing degrees. We conclude with a discussion of the role of authentic assessment and provide five recommendations for how academics might assess the seven HE outdoor education threshold concepts described by Thomas et al. (2019) to support communication of graduate capabilities to employers, students, graduates, and other outdoor education stakeholders.
Details
- Title
- Assessing outdoor and environmental education threshold concepts in Australian universities
- Authors
- Scott Polley - University of South AustraliaBeth McLeod - Australian Catholic UniversityJoss Rankin - Flinders UniversityBrendon Munge (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Education and Tertiary AccessPeter Bovino - Victoria UniversityDuncan Picknoll - The University of Notre Dame Australia
- Publication details
- Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, Vol.28, pp.245-267
- Publisher
- Springer
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1007/s42322-024-00168-2
- ISSN
- 2522-879X; 2206-3110
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Education and Tertiary Access
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991026295702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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