Staff
|General| |Qualifications & Interests| |Publications|
Dr Robbie Nicol (Lecturer)
Email: Robbie.Nicol@ed.ac.uk
Dr Robbie Nicol is a lecturer in the outdoor and environmental education section at Moray House Institute, the School of Education of the University of Edinburgh. He has worked as an outdoor educator within the public, commercial, charitable and voluntary sectors. He holds a wide range of national governing body awards in canoeing/kayaking, mountaineering and skiing and maintains an active participation in these activities through journeying.
In his current post he is responsible for a range of undergraduate and postgraduate outdoor education programmes. He is responsible for the supervision of MSc and PhD students covering a range of topics including child development, emotional intelligences, the use and application of learning models, and cross-cultural education. His own PhD is is titled 'Outdoor Education for Sustainable Living?: An investigation into the potential of Scottish local authority residential outdoor education centres to deliver programmes relating to sustainable living'. This investigation looked at the meaning of personal and social education in relation to theoretical, policy and operational perspectives.
He is involved in Continuing Professional Development through involvement with a European Union funded Socrates programme titled 'Outdoor Education: Authentic Learning in the Context of Landscapes'. He has also been recently co-opted onto the Board of the European Institute for Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning.
His research interests are directed towards the theoretical development and practical implementation of environmental education, sustainability education and epistemological diversity (different ways of knowing) particularly in the outdoors.
He is involved in a longitudinal and retrospective case study of the 25 year operation of a local education authority residential outdoor centre in Scotland. The data includes a list of every pupil who attended the centre, the instructor they had, the school they came from, and the school teachers who accompanied them. The findings will help us understand some of claims made of residential outdoor education in relation to pupils' actual experience over their lifetimes.
