A Qualitative Perspective of the question "To what extent is Experiential Education reflected in practice at FML (Flying Moose Lodge)?"

"The Qualitative Researcher does more than observe history, he or she plays a part in it (Denzin and Lincoln p. 12)"

Situating Myself

I sometimes feel that I approach things in ways that most others consider "backwards" from what makes sense to them. In artistic endeavors, for example, I rarely start with a subject matter, but rather let one emerge as the paint builds on the canvas, or as the words hit the page. Ideas gel for me after I get them outside of my mind. I puzzle them together from the resources, materials, and constraints at hand. I excel at adapting and improvising -- which is not typically the method taught in Academics (if even accepted) as sustainable.

Ironically, my approach is less an approach than a retrospective review. Rather than plan and map out where I'm going, I go and map out where I've been. Only after years of college did I identify a common thread of communication in them. From the verbal form of Communication, to the visual form of Art, again in the written form of Writing, and now incorporating all three in Education, I've been interested in individual and social conceptualization through communication. Finally, after 2 1/2 years at Madison in Educational Technology, I realized that what I was searching for carried the name "Experiential Education", and it had been a huge part of my summer life for years. Naming is half the battle.

The question I am currently researching involves an obsession I am wholly immersed in outside of my academic career. This search for personal meaning includes an attachment that begs for a Qualitative Approach. Since 1993, I have helped run a Maine wilderness canoe camp for boys called Flying Moose Lodge (FML). The base camp is nestled between three old mountains on the shore of a small, clean, spring-fed lake. Campers stay in platform tents three days a week, and go out on 4-8 person expeditions (canoeing, hiking, and biking) the rest of the week for one or both of the two 24 day sessions held each summer. There is no electricity or telephone, and also no boomboxes, walkmans, TVs, Game Boys®, or other amenities of modern hi-tech life -- beyond flashlights.

In summer I live across the lake from camp, and commute twice daily in a 15-20 minute paddle, depending on traffic -- I paddle around the loons as they fish; or at night, sometimes the moon's reflection stops traffic outright. I mention this to situate myself, and my bias towards the place -- it is my Eden (Ladson-Billings p 272).

FML does not advertise widely beyond word-of-mouth, gathering most of its campers from friends and families of campers that have come in the past. It draws heavily from the Quaker community around Philadelphia, and was run by Quaker schoolteachers from 1921-1994. Relative to other residential camps in New England, FML is inexpensive, running about $3000 for 24 days, and $4000 for 48 days. However, this is prohibitively expensive relative to most U.S. families, and so attracts economically privileged, mostly white, (and mostly heterosexual) boys. This makes it ripe for critical study of race, class, and gender -- gushy, fall-apart-in-my-hands-and-stain-the-carpet ripe. Someday I hope to be at the point where I am ready to handle that aspect. For now I want to focus on the Experiential Education in it.

The Conceptual Contributions of Qualitative Research

Although I recognize and define my approach for this research as Qualitative, I consider it a philosophical underpinning rather than a category of methodology set in opposition to Quantitative. In broadly sliced terms, this dichotomy might better embody the Quantitative Approach. While I embrace a qualitative perspective, I doubt I would employ only qualitative methods. Numbers are very useful in attracting and keeping the attention of many people, and I understand that a large and practical part of any research undertaking is attracting and holding attention. Beyond that, a qualitative approach brings with it a primary interest in understanding a problem rather than measuring it. So for the question, "To what extent is Experiential Education reflected in practice at Flying Moose Lodge?"(which is where my question currently stands) the answer will not be a definitive measurement of "extent" (e.g. "50% experiential"), but would rather consist trying to personally understand the depth of the question, and portraying open answers (through writing or some other format). In order to answer the main question, other questions need to be raised, developed and answered.

Obviously, my primary question, since it focuses on a specific place (FML) what Flood calls a "bounded system", and has followed a mostly unchanged "general pattern of behavior" since 1921, meets the requirements to merit being a Case Study (Stake, p.436), and so can specifically benefit from the framework and models from that to guide what I do -- but these also offer insight into what I will learn.

What would I learn by doing a qualitative approach to a study of experiential education at FML? This is a relevant question to my research situation at this juncture.

The question suggests that the research is what Stake calls an instrumental case study since looking at FML through a qualitative lens from an Experiential Education position allows me insight into Experiential Education (p. 437). However, it also sets up the apparatus that allows me to see Experiential Education from an FML position. Lenses change the view from both sides. Hence, I find myself, like Alan Peshkin, hoping to "present my case so that it can be read with interest in the case itself" but with a second agenda " to learn from the case about some class of things" -- Experiential Education (p. 438). Studying the tree will aid in understanding the forest as much as studying the forest will aid in understanding the tree.

Herein lies a chunk of my confusion -- my question aims to both understand (intrinsic) and illustrate (instrumental) how the concerns of Experiential Education researchers and theorists are manifest in FML (p. 439). Can I do both???

Now that I've identified this as a case study, let me list some of the attributes I have to work with:

• Interest: I love FML, and strongly believe that one 3 1/2 weeks of it does much more for a boy than a semester of traditional classroom schooling.
• Trust: After nine years as an Assistant Director, I have the trust of, and access to, the family that has been involved in the camp since 1927, and owned and directed it since 1940 (currently a husband and wife team), as well as many of the staff and returning families.
• Resources: I have seven hours of 16mm film footage of the camp, taken from 1921 to 1974. Additionally, Harrie Price III, the director from 1940-1985 wrote and self-published a book (A Bad Case of Moosepox), preserving much of the philosophy and history of the camp before his death in 1992. Finally, I brought a video camera to the camp last year and acclimated many of the current staff and campers to my video-based research.
• Choice: From its Quaker school roots, to its experiential approach, and more specifically its expeditionary (camping) focus -- there are a number of intertwined threads of educational theory unconsciously put into practice at Flying Moose Lodge.
• Focus: Since first reading John Dewey, I've been enthralled with his pragmatic approach to experiential education. Since FML was started by a Quaker school teacher in 1921, when Dewey's ideas were first gaining popularity, and because very little has changed in both the trip and in-camp programs there, I suspect that I can identify powerful links to Experiential Education.

Given the above characteristics of the research situation, it's easy to match them with Stake's list of issues (p. 438-9). A qualitative perspective would help me to find more intimate explanations of:

1. The nature of the case. I'd like to explore camper and staff perceptions of the camp through stories, interviews, and other means in order to get multiple perspectives of what it means to them and why they keep coming back.
2. The case's historical background. I'm interested in exploring both Deweyian and Quaker school influence on the camp staff and campers.
3. The physical setting. Since the notion of setting and place play a large part in experiential education, I would like to further hear how the camp's location influences its appeal and educational value to participants.
4. Other contexts. Things like the expense of camp and economic means of its campers, the political aspects of Quakerism, the legal constraints of operating a camp, as well as the muted Quaker aesthetic, all play a role in shaping the experience and effect of FML, and are worth examining.
5. Other cases through which this case is recognized. Experiential Education studies have been done on Outward Bound and other schools, and these studies may contribute ideas and perspectives that will enrich my own study.
6. Those informants through whom the case can be known. Perhaps most importantly, the participants and focus of the study, including myself, will provide a chorus of voice and perspective through which a verdant reading of the camp's Experiential Education practices might be understood.

Ultimately, I see myself doing more than one study. The first, that I'm undertaking now, looks like it will be an exploratory study, linking Experiential Education and FML through events and ideas captured in the film footage, autobiographical book, and son's recollections of Harrie III who was involved for 65 years. While I don't want to focus here on the methodology I hope to use, I feel that it is important to note that I expect to use multiple methods in order to provide multiple perceptions for triangulation (p. 443).

The second study might be a narrative study focusing on stories written and told (via interview) by families who grew up with FML in their family (2nd and 3rd generational campers).

At some point, I'd like to address issues of race, class, and gender, but feel a need to do so in such a way that I do not destroy or denigrate the good things about the current system, or to erode trust and good-will of the family who owns and directs the camp. I hope, that as I further explore the positives of the camp, I will uncover a non-antagonistic way to study and positively influence issues of race, class, and gender in the camp.