Character in action: Outdoor education, moral practice, and the Czech tradition

This article examines Czech outdoor education as a historically distinctive configuration of traditions encompassing turistika, tramping, Scouting, woodcraft, the Foglar tradition, and the experiential courses of the Vacation School of Lipnice. It argues that character education occurs not only in schools but also in non-formal and experiential settings. The article examines how these traditions integrate experience, community, and a relationship with nature within a coherent, though largely implicit, pedagogical framework. Across these traditions, recurring pedagogical emphases include learning through action, voluntarily accepted responsibility, community norms, and the formative role of challenging situations in natural environments. In the concluding synthesis, these traditions are interpreted as a practical response to the knowledge–action gap in moral education—the discrepancy between moral understanding and moral action. The article argues that Czech outdoor education offers an alternative epistemology of character education, in which values are formed and stabilized through repeated experience, interpersonal relationships, and communal practice.