Del saber al actuar en tiempos de emergencia climática: un enfoque dilemático en la Educación al Aire Libre

This paper proposes a reading of Outdoor Education (OE) through a dilemmatic approach that assumes complexity as a structural condition of contemporary educational experience. In a context marked by the climate crisis and by the permanent tension between what is useful and what is dignified, it argues that mere awareness of the problem does not in itself trigger systemic transformations, since both the epistemic novelty of climate change and the defensive strategies adopted in response to its complexity hinder responsible action. On the basis of this analysis, the paper makes explicit a theoretical framework that understands educational processes as “dilemmatic fields,” in which the choice of one option does not eliminate the alternatives, but rather keeps the tensions alive (Tateo, 2018). After clarifying the notion of dilemma—and distinguishing it from doubt and conflict—it is argued, with Sarid (2022), that a dilemmatic approach occupies an intermediate rationality between the normative and the merely descriptive; it does not seek to “resolve” oppositions, but to inhabit them critically, avoiding both naive simplifications and evasions. In this perspective, two complementary levels are distinguished: (a) education as dilemma, focused on the ethical decisions of teachers and educators in the face of critical incidents and competing forces; and (b) education for dilemma, aimed at equipping students with the tools to deliberate in uncertain scenarios. In line with Birbes (2023; 2025), OE can be understood as a way to reactivate ecological identity, provided that the “outside the classroom” is not reduced to superficial exploration, but becomes ecological study and reflection on experience. This requirement is linked to an autopoietic organization and to “ethical competence” (Damiano, 2007), understood as the narrative and deliberative capacity to reflect on one’s own conduct in situations of uncertainty, with particular reference to the issue of climate change. As an operational contribution, the paper presents a proposal for “ecological orienteering,” which reconfigures the activity in formative terms: the outdoor experience is accompanied by an assessment device that measures not only performance, but also socio-environmental responsibility. Along the route, certain choices of care—for example, stopping to collect litter, even if this entails losing time or positions—are incorporated into the scoring system, so that the dilemma between competing and protecting becomes explicit, observable, and open to discussion. It is argued that this formative architecture turns the dilemma into an object of learning: it makes it possible to record decisions, justify reasons, confront consequences, and deliberate collectively, thus fostering the transition from a merely declarative “knowing the good” to a practiced “doing the good”—that is, toward forms of subjectivation that are responsible and consistent with socio-environmental justice.