The ocean, blue spaces and outdoor learning edited by Mike Brown, Abingdon, Routledge, 2025, 272 pp., €157.50 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-032-22411, €57.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-032-22414-5, €57.99 (eBook), ISBN: 978-1-003-27249-6, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003272496 [book review]

Abstract

At a time when blue-space research is expanding across leisure studies, public health, environmental humanities and outdoor education, The Ocean, Blue Spaces and Outdoor Learning offers a timely invitation to move beyond treating the sea as a scenic backdrop for human activity. Edited by Mike Brown, the collection approaches the ocean as an active pedagogical, social and more-than-human environment: a place through which identities are formed, communities are negotiated, risks are interpreted, and environmental responsibilities may be learned. Its central contribution lies in connecting learning in, through and with the ocean to questions fundamental to leisure scholarship, including well-being, belonging, access, embodiment, place, play and ecological care.