Building an Outdoor Education Curriculum from Scratch
Rob Houghton
As the First Head of Outdoor Education at Melbourne Girls Grammar, Rob arrived at a school that had no tradition of Outdoor Education. Presented with a blank sheet, his first job was to define what Outdoor Education was, what it could achieve, and what would be its primary goals for the students. Having done that, he set about writing a curriculum that would inform all of the outdoor experiences that each and every student would enjoy in their career at the school.
In this talk, Rob shares his learning from the process that saw him start with nothing and progress to a philosophy of Outdoor Education which, in turn, underpins a comprehensive curriculum from Kinder to Year 12.
About Rob
Rob is a career outdoor educator with experience going back more than 25 years. Since beginning his career as a lowly outdoor instructor, living in a tent on a Welsh mountainside, he has worked all over the world in a variety of roles.
He has been an expedition leader, taking students on multi-week expeditions to countries on five continents. He’s been a ski guide in the Italian Dolomites. After completing his teaching degree in Outdoor Education and English at Bangor University, he took on a job at Gordonstoun school, the alma mater of both King Charles and his father and the home of the Duke of Edinburgh Award and Outward Bound. He’s worked for UWCSEA in Singapore, spending 22 weeks a year in the field. He’s been up mountains and down potholes and everything in between. He even wrote the definitive, English-language guide to mountain biking in Slovenia.
Latterly, he ran his own outdoor education consultancy and first aid training company before moving to Australia in 2016 where he now works as the first Head of Outdoor Education at Melbourne Girls Grammar School.
Outside of work, he still enjoys doing many of the activities that he’s spent the best part of his life teaching, but, in addition, he relishes writing, he’s fond of fondue, and partial to a pinot.
