Taking Off the Backpacks: The Transference of Outdoor Experiential Education to the Classroom

Abstract

Schools of education continue to struggle with how to best meet the needs of practicing teachers enrolled in graduate teacher education programs. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Education designed a graduate teacher education program with an embedded outdoor education residency component to disrupt practicing teachers’ concepts of teaching with the intent of impacting their professional practice. This qualitative study reports the results of a multi-year investigation into the transference of the learning that occurs in the outdoor experiential education residency into teachers’ classroom communities. The experiential opportunities were designed to embolden the teachers to rethink community and to reinvent their teaching practice. The findings inform our understanding of the transference of outdoor experiential education as teachers took off their backpacks and returned to the K-12 classroom. Particularly evident in the data were the ways teachers’ own engagement in authentic community as part of the residency model influenced their efforts to create the same opportunities for their K-12 students and for themselves in their school communities. Our findings reveal images of possibility while also noting obstacles to transference.

Does growth in the outdoors stay in the outdoors? The impact of an extended residential and outdoor learning experience on student motivation, engagement and 21st century capabilities

“…Future research should explore how these factors can be incorporated into the normal school context, in line with literature on the importance of social facilitators of engagement (e.g., Furlong and Christenson, 2008 ; Lietaert et al, 2014 ) and international evidence on the benefits of outdoor learning ( Mann et al, 2022b ). Additionally, further research could investigate intentional strategies to maximize transfer of learning from OAE environments to the normal school context ( Bolick et al, 2022 ).…”

e‐Delphi in the outdoors: Stakeholder contributions to the development of a wellbeing‐focused outdoor adventure education intervention program

“…17 In the current study, which aimed to gain consensus on OAE program elements to impact adolescent wellbeing, results indicated that so-called adventurous experiences (those perceived as high risk for participants) were less likely to impact wellbeing when compared with experiences that foster relationships due to the level of focus that Peak Adventure demands. As Bolick et al 44 note, no one is immune to risk-taking in OAE, with a spectrum of tasks or activities ranging from sleeping outdoors, sharing personal information with others, or rock climbing that may result in frustration, failure, or success depending on the individual. A solution to this could be a more deliberate scaffolding of each skill or activity by staff to decrease the perception of risk in participants, resulting in some activities being less engaging than if they were in Peak Adventure and allowing more space for wellbeing development.…”