What makes something special?

This was the philosophical question we identified in our Philosophy for Children workshop at the Institute for Outdoor Learning National Conference, this weekend. The aim of P4C is to develop communities of enquiry in educational settings in order promote creative and independent thinking with children and young people.

Sadly, it seems to me, that thinking skills have become a niche interest beyond primary education.  In a number of the contexts in which I teach, too many students are too strongly outcome-focussed, hoping to arrive at an acceptable result by the quickest means. A "What do I do next?" teacher-dependent approach often prevails. Attempts to develop a process-focussed approach, considering the means by which we arrive at decisions, seem to go against the grain of the educational experience of many students and they find it difficult.

In another workshop Marcus Bailie of the Adventurous Activities Licensing Authority talked about human error accidents in adventurous activities. Marcus identified human error as the biggest single cause of accidents and talked about the different safety cultures of surgeons and pilots as examples. Models of human error, including "lemons" and "the turkey trap" were discussed. Limiting distraction/focussing attention, supervision (of students by the instructor and instructors by managers) and buddy checking (duality) were also discussed.  Buddy checking is strongly embedded in flight crew teams but not in operating theatres. Finally Marcus addressed the "to tie in or clip in" issue of rock-climbing with groups. He concluded, against a strong degree of popular wisdom, that it is generally safer to clip in as it:

• is easier to teach clipping a karabiner safely than tying a safe knot
• is easier for students to check one another - the "squeeze test"
• frees the attention of the instructor to supervise safety rather than repeatedly tying knots

The issue of "more links in the safety chain" is not significant, as equipment failure contributes much less to safety than human error through inattention.

And on Sunday I went kayaking on the River Washburn with friends from Bradford and Bingley Canoe Club and walked with Mrs Nutton through local autumn woods.  Quite a special weekend!