Conversations that shape a career: My Journey Towards Experience:

Dr. Leigh Burrows' paperback has safely sat on a shelf above my desk for years. The book titled: Feeling Real: 'It's Like Putting My Hand Through a Wall Into Another World' penned by the Flinders University Senior Lecturer of Education was a thorough exploration of "Helping an 'unreachable' and 'uneducatable' boy with autism develop a sense of self through drawing on different ways of knowing: a holistic-relational approach."

I sat in her office in 2014, eager to find a supervisor to chair my PhD. Ultimately, it wouldn't be Dr. Burrows, but our discussion of theory and research sticks with me a decade later. Following our discussion, she handed me the book from her bookshelf and told me to keep it, recommended I apply for the Australian Postgraduate Award, and said she'd supervise an outdoor therapy-focused research project aligned with a "narrative" theoretical orientation. 

My masters' supervisor (and Friend of the Centre), Dr. John Paul Healy, had offered PhD supervision as well but urged me to chat with anyone who would listen about supporting my research. He might have been sick of me.

I spoke with researchers at the University of Melbourne who asked if I wanted to study outdoor therapies in line with the federal government's funding for the national youth mental health service. One excellent professor from the University of New South Wales wanted to help me facilitate expeditions of different lengths to study outcomes in relation to dose effect. It was exciting to talk with so many experts from various corners of the academic world, 

I did end up being awarded with the life changing Australian Postgraduate Award, but not with Dr. Burrows.

​With John... Ugh, we've only been dear friends ever since. 

This is the actual first day John and I met face to face.

However, the few hours I spent with Dr. Burrows profoundly altered my professional. She led me towards "narrative" - not the therapy, the inquiry. 

Spending nearly two decades in Adelaide, South Australia, I was well-versed in the narrative therapy hype. I live just a ten-minute drive from the famous and impactful Dulwich Centre - the very place Dr. Healy and I were politely asked to vacate the premises when I brought him there on his rock and roll tour of famous therapy places last year. Jokes.

Moments after John and I were asked to hit the road...

While I have not spoken to Dr. Burrows in years (I will reach out following writing this cathartic piece), her impact in directing me to the narrative method, informing my doctoral research — narrative inquiry — remains today. Those two words and her writing single-handedly changed how I conceptualise my clinical work and think about the word experiential. 

Narrative inquiry is a research methodology focused solely on human experience. Most experiential educators and outdoor therapy providers recognise that people make sense of their lives through the stories they tell about what they experience. Ultimately, this approach can empower people to share what they have experienced and privilege the experiential nature of being alive.

Rooted in pragmatist philosophy, narrative inquiry aligns closely with the work of John Dewey, the experiential educator and philosopher who argued experience as the foundation of learning and meaning-making. The untold narrative here is that Dewey was mentored by William James, co-founder of the American Psychological Association, and considered an intellectual soulmate to Jane Addams, the mother of professional social work.

Pragmatism and experiential thinking links all of them.

Dewey saw experience as continuous and interactive, shaped by the environment. To be experiential does not require a specific activity, technique, or game. Conversations are experiential. Talking to a therapist is an experience. Walk and talk therapy near a rushing river is an experience. We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. 

Dewey's ideas provide a strong theoretical basis for narrative inquiry. Both approaches view knowledge as evolving through lived experience. Narrative inquiry attempts to capture the complexity of human experiences by listening to people's stories, much like Dewey’s philosophy, which underscores the importance of context and reflection when engaging in the vast world of outdoor therapies. No experience "ends" or "begins."

Beyond Buzzwords
In 2024, John and I started writing about foundational social work texts. "Experiential" was front and centre from the early 1900s. Then, it vanished. Then, it returned during the Freedom Schools movement in response to the Jim Crow segregation system in the USA in the 1960s.

Today, however, in the therapy world, which is crowded with treatment manuals and diagnostic criteria, we are experiencing a "crowded curriculum" — a John Dewey-ism.

Dewey was indirectly involved in the Bowen Country Club, a summer camp established in 1912. Jane Addams' Hull House managed the camp, which was designed as an experimental educational and recreational space for working-class children and families. 

The Bowen Country Club mission.

Although Dewey was not a direct founder or administrator, his progressive education ideas shaped youth activities. He maintained close ties with the University of Chicago and the progressive education movement in the city, and his philosophy was reflected in the club’s hands-on, community-centred approach to learning. The Bowen Country Club served as an example of Deweyan principles in action, offering children opportunities for self-directed learning, cooperative activities, and connection with nature.

When I read about the symbiotic relationship of Jane Addams, William James, and John Dewey, I am reminded of a lost history. Reflecting on what it means to be experiential, I keep returning to Jane Addams' writings about democracy.

Yes, I too wrote about "tent therapy" for patients suffering from Tuberculosis more than a century ago. That's what the outdoor therapy texts said was the history. But I wonder about the lost narratives of outdoor work from the very gurus who aided in forming our professions. How much of the outdoor therapy world's historical and philosophical texts are lost? Has their work become eclipsed?

Experiential is, yes, about doing things together. But it's not about what we do. It's about how we reflect on what we did— learning from experience, not doing activity. Learning from each other. A co-creation of learning.

With Gratitude
In a chance encounter, Dr. Burrows reminded me of what it means to be experiential. It is most important how those I work with experience what we do together. Whether we're sitting in my office talking or scaling a mountain doesn't matter. We all know two people will experience those same "activities" differently. 

Just an experiential thought. :)

Regards,

Will