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You
are here: Experiential Practice:
Outdoor, Environmental, and Adventure Education
The interlacing fields of outdoor, adventure, and environmental education are not easily distinguished. One strand that links these three fields is the emphasis on experiential learning. Improved interpersonal skills and learner empowerment are often primary intended outcomes. What are these three aspects of education? Even outdoor, environmental, and adventure education practitioners struggle to distinguish among them, if they bother to try at all.
In Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, Simon Priest and Mike Gass explain that genuine experiential education involves "learning by doing with reflection," (Priest and Gass, 1997, p. 17).
They continue:
Outdoor education follows the experiential philosophy of learning by doing. It takes place primarily, but not exclusively, through involvement with the natural environment. In outdoor education, the emphasis for a subject of learning is placed on relationships concerning people and natural resources. (Priest and Gass, 1997, p. 17)
Priest and Gass claim that historically, adventure education and environmental education have been identified as two branches of outdoor education: adventure education emphasizing intra- and inter-personal relationships, while environmental education emphasizes ecological principles and ekistic relationships. (Ekistic relationships are the interactions between human society and the natural resources surrounding it.) I would argue that environmental education is far broader than a branch of outdoor education, occurring both indoors and outdoors, in both formal and non formal settings, and growing out of the conservation movement as much as from outdoor education. Environmental education plays a seminal role in many outdoor education programs, including playing an increasing part in adventure-based programs. The three fields (outdoor, adventure and environmental education would fit more appropriately in a Venn diagram of intertwined circles, with overlap and individuality for each.
In Personal Growth through Adventure, David Hopkins and Roger Putnam explain that outdoor education's most important goals are to heighten awareness of and foster respect for:
(1) self, through meeting challenges;
(2) others, through group process and decision-making; and
(3) the natural environment, through direct experience.
(Hopkins and Putnam, 1993, p. 9).This definition clearly overlaps with both adventure and environmental education, with a possible shift in emphasis. Adventure educators may emphasize the first goal while environmental educators may place more emphasis on the third.
The key is that these three forms of education share an experiential learning emphasis, an outgrowth of Dewey and others' thinking in the early part of the twentieth century (see article by John Haskin on this site). All three fields -- of outdoor, environmental, and adventure education -- emphasize experiential learning. David A. Kolb's seminal work in experiential learning offers insights into the meaning of experiential learning. He describes six characteristics of experiential learning. He says that:
1) learning should be conceived as a process, not measured in terms of outcomes;
2) that process is continual, grounded in experience;
3) learning results from resolving conflicts between opposing modes of adapting to the world;
4) the learning process involves holistic adaptation to the world;
5) it must involve interactions between the learner and her environment; &
6) learning occurs when the student is creating knowledge
(Kolb, 1984, pp. 25-38).
In their essay "Experiential Learning: Past and Present," Linda Lewis and Carol Williams explain Kolb's four requirements for experiential education: The learners will:
1) get involved fully and openly in new experiences;
2) reflect on and interpret these experiences from different perspectives;
3) create concepts and ideas to integrate their observations logically; and
4) use their learning and newly derived theories to make decisions, solve problems and meet new challenges.
(Jackson and Caffarella, 1994, p. 10)Herein lies the commonality amongst adventure, environmental and outdoor educators: using a variety of venues and balancing emphasis according to the specific goals of the educators and the students, all three involve learning through experience, reflection and application.
References
Priest, Simon and Gass, Michael A. (1997) Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Hopkins, David and Roger Putnam. (1993) Personal Growth through Adventure. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Jackson, Lewis and Rosemary S. Caffarella. (1994) Experiential Learning: A New Approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kolb, David A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Denise Dumouchel, M.S.Ed., has worked in residential environmental education in the U.S. and overseas for over 15 years. After five years as Education Director for the Headlands Institute in California, she taught school and pursued a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies, focusing her doctoral thesis on effective approaches to professional development for educators. She left a position as Assistant Professor of Environmental Education at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania to join IslandWood. Education: B.A., University of Rochester; M.S.Ed., Northern Illinois University; Ph.D. candidate, Environmental Studies, Antioch University / New England. You may reach Denise by emailing denised@islandwood.org.
© May 2003 New Horizons for Learning
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